Why it works: Rhubarb and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Rhubarb Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
Wash the rhubarb stalks and cut off the green ends.
Cut the remaining stalks into small pieces and steep them with a stick of cinnamon in an earthenware dish.
Once tender, strain the mixture and add sugar to taste.
Dissolve cornstarch, arrowroot, or agar-agar in cold water and stir it into the fruit juice.
Boil the mixture for 10 minutes and serve warm on soup plates with sterilized cream, or pour into molds and cool.
If serving warm, let the fruit juice cool first, then reheat and add the thickening.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Rhubarb + arrowroottop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together12 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Rhubarb + cinnamontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together279 recipes
Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
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Cinnamon + arrowroottop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together166 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together30,779 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Cinnamon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the cinnamon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rhubarb, sugar, arrowroot, cream):
- Cinnamonthe original
- Nutmegfits about as well
- Capersfits about as well
- Turmericfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, arrowroot, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
More rhubarb pudding recipes
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