Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb Tarts

A pastry shell filled with rhubarb and brown sugar, topped with a lid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and rhubarb match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 670 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rhubarb Tarts

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.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the lard into the flour, add a pinch of salt, and enough cold water to form a stiff paste.

  3. Knead the paste until smooth, then cut it into long strips and break off pieces weighing 1 oz. each.

Shape and fill

  1. Shape the pieces into cups, leaving the inside thickest, and set them up using your fingers or on blocks.

  2. Fill the shells nearly full with rhubarb and brown sugar.

Add lids and bake

  1. Roll out the lids and make a small hole in the center of each lid.

  2. Place the lids on the filled shells and wash them with water.

  3. Optionally, brush the tops with egg wash or a mixture of sugar and water before baking.

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. Flour + rhubarbtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry shells once mixed with water.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the pastry short and tender by coating flour particles.
Rhubarb
Provides the tart acidity and the main filling that softens during baking.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the rhubarb filling and balances its tartness.

The step that matters

Make the paste stiff and knead it smooth. Too much water makes the pastry tough, while kneading develops gluten for a sturdy shell that holds its cup shape and filling.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Rhubarbthe original
  4. Nutmegfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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

Rhubarb PieRhubarb Pie152 recipesRhubarb MarmaladeRhubarb Marmalade35 recipesRhubarb JellyRhubarb Jelly28 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes