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Dessert

Rhubarb Tart

A tart of sliced rhubarb simmered in a sugar syrup, topped with a light crust and served with custard or cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Rhubarb Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Peel the rhubarb and cut it into 1-inch pieces, sprinkling a little sugar into the basin as you go.

Make the syrup and cook the rhubarb

  1. In a saucepan, boil the sugar in water to create a thin syrup.

  2. Add the rhubarb to the syrup and simmer gently, shaking the pan often until the rhubarb turns green.

Assemble and bake

  1. Once cooled, place the rhubarb in a tart dish with enough syrup to keep it moist.

  2. Cover with a light crust and bake until the crust is golden.

  3. Serve with custard or cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Rhubarb + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb stalks
Forms the main filling and provides the tart, fresh flavour that the sugar balances.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the rhubarb and, dissolved in water, forms the syrup that keeps the fruit moist.

The step that matters

Simmering the rhubarb in syrup. Simmering gently and shaking the pan keeps the pieces whole and evenly coated. Boiling hard would break the rhubarb down into a mush.

Swap the rhubarb

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Rhubarbthe original
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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.

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