Name: Rhubarb
Ingredients: green stalks of rhubarb; juice of 1 lemon or Seville orange; sifted loaf sugar; puff pastry

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

Ingredients

green stalks of rhubarb
juice of 1 lemon or Seville orange
sifted loaf sugar
puff pastry

Directions

Prepare the filling

Cut the rhubarb into small pieces, about the size of young gooseberries.
Place the rhubarb in a dish and squeeze the lemon or orange juice over it.
Sweeten the rhubarb with sifted loaf sugar to taste.

Bake and serve

Cover the mixture with puff pastry.
Bake until the pastry is golden and serve plain or with 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.

Rhubarb + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together546 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Lemon + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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 tart filling and supplies the sharp, fruity flavour that the sugar balances.
Sifted loaf sugar: Sweetens the rhubarb and offsets its natural tartness.
Lemon or seville orange juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rhubarb flavour.
Puff pastry: Forms the crisp, flaky, golden crust that covers the filling.