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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie with rhubarb, flour, sugar, and pie crust, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Rhubarb Pie

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 ↓

Rhubarb Pie

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

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

  2. Wash and dry the rhubarb, then cut it into ½ inch pieces.

  3. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of flour in the bottom of the pie crust.

  4. Layer the rhubarb in the crust and sprinkle ¾ cup of sugar over the top.

  5. If the rhubarb is old, peel it and add a little more sugar.

Assemble the pie

  1. Wet the edges of the bottom crust with cold water and flour mixture.

  2. Place the top crust on and press the edges together firmly.

  3. Trim the excess crust and crimp the edges.

  4. Cut a small opening in the crust and insert a piece of macaroni to allow steam to escape.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. 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

Rhubarb
Provides the tart flavor and the juicy body of the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the rhubarb's sourness.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the juices released by the rhubarb as the pie bakes.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the pie's structure.

The step that matters

Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of flour in the bottom of the pie crust.. Flour is the thickener that binds the juices the rhubarb releases while baking. If it is left out or unevenly spread, the filling can stay runny and soak the crust.

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.

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