Name: Rhubarb Pie
Ingredients: Rhubarb stalks, cut into pieces; Lemon juice; Orange peel; Sugar, to taste; Rose water, to taste; Cinnamon, to taste; Puff pastry for the crust

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

Stew the rhubarb pieces in a saucepan for a few minutes.
Place the stewed rhubarb in a pie dish.
Squeeze lemon juice over the rhubarb.
Add orange peel, sugar, rose water, and cinnamon to taste.

Assemble and bake

Cover the filling with puff pastry.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,437 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Rhubarb + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together279 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Rhubarb + orangetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together299 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb: Provides the tart flavour and bulk that forms the pie filling.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and offsets the sharpness of the rhubarb.
Puff pastry: Forms a flaky, golden crust that browns in the oven.

Swap the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, orange, sugar, rose, cinnamon):

Nutmegfits better
Allspicefits better
Gingerfits better
Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, orange, sugar, rose, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.