Skip to main content
Main

Rhubarb Preserve

A sweet preserve made by simmering sliced rhubarb with crystallized and lump sugar, lemon rind, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Rhubarb Preserve

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Lay the sliced rhubarb on a flat dish and sprinkle with crystallized sugar.

  2. Let it stand in a cold cellar for 12 hours.

Make the syrup

  1. Pour off the liquid into a preserving pan and add lump sugar.

  2. Make a spice bag with muslin and add lemon rind, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger.

  3. Boil the mixture for 40 minutes until the syrup thickens.

Cook the preserve

  1. Remove the spice bag and add the rhubarb.

  2. Boil gently until the rhubarb is soft but not damaged, skimming carefully.

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.

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.

  1. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Rhubarb + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 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 main fruit body and tartness that the sugar sweetens in the finished preserve.
Crystallized sugar
Draws liquid out of the rhubarb through osmosis, creating the syrup used for cooking.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and thickens the syrup as it boils down, helping the preserve set.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the rhubarb is soft but not damaged. Vigorous boiling breaks down the rhubarb pieces into mush, so gentle heat keeps them whole. Skimming removes foam and impurities, leaving a clearer preserve.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rhubarb, sugar, cinnamon, clove, ginger):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Quincefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, cinnamon, clove, ginger. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes