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Dessert

Pie-plant Pie

A pastry crust filled with rhubarb, lemon, and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and flour 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 ↓

Pie-plant Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Line pie plates with pastry.

  2. In a bowl, combine pie plant, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

Fill and assemble

  1. Fill the bottom crust with the pie plant mixture.

  2. Sprinkle sugar over the filling, using 1 cup per pie.

  3. Dredge a little flour over the filling.

  4. Cover with the top crust, making sure to cut a hole in the center.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  2. Dust the top with powdered sugar before serving.

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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Pie plant (rhubarb)
Provides the tart flavour and the bulk of the filling, which softens and thickens as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and draws out juice that forms the filling's syrup.
Flour
Dusted over the filling to absorb juices and help the filling set rather than run.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rhubarb's flavour and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Cover with the top crust, making sure to cut a hole in the center.. Rhubarb releases a lot of juice as it bakes. The centre vent lets steam escape so the filling does not build pressure, bubble over, or make the crust soggy.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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