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Preserve

To Pheser Ve Rhubarb

A preserve of rhubarb cooked with sugar, finely chopped bitter almonds and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 117 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Pheser Ve Rhubarb

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe the rhubarb dry.

  2. Peel the rhubarb if it is not young.

Cook

  1. Combine the rhubarb, sugar, chopped almonds, and lemon peel in a pot.

  2. Boil the mixture until it sets firm, which takes longer than for other fruits.

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. Rhubarb + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
Forms the bulk of the preserve and supplies the tart flavour the sugar balances.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and, as it concentrates, helps preserve and set the mixture.
Blanched bitter almonds
Add a nutty, bitter aroma and some texture to the preserve.
Lemon peel
Adds bright citrus aroma that lifts the sweet and tart flavours.

The step that matters

Boiling until the mixture sets firm. Rhubarb is low in natural setting agents, so the mixture must boil long enough to thicken as water evaporates and sugar concentrates. Stopping early leaves it runny, while overcooking can make it dense and overly sticky.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, almond. 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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