Name: Rhubarb Tart
Ingredients: 6 stalks rhubarb; 4 cups sugar; 4 strips lemon rind; ½ cup water

Why it works: Rhubarb and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 546 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb Tart

Ingredients

6 stalks rhubarb
4 cups sugar
4 strips lemon rind
½ cup water

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Remove the leaves and skins from the rhubarb.
Cut the stalks into 1-inch pieces.
Fill a dish high in the center with the rhubarb pieces.
Add the sugar, lemon rind, and water.
Optionally, stew the rhubarb before baking to increase the amount you can fit in the dish.

Bake

Cover the dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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.

Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together546 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,852 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb: Provides the tart flavor and the fibrous body that softens into the filling as it bakes.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and balances the sharp acidity of the rhubarb.
Lemon rind: Adds bright citrus aroma from its aromatic oils.