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Dessert

Rhubarb Mould

A chilled rhubarb gelatin dessert set in a mould, flavored with lemon and almond, colored with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Rhubarb Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. In a quart basin, combine rhubarb, water, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon rind.

  2. Boil gently, stirring occasionally to prevent burning, until the rhubarb has softened.

Add the gelatine

  1. Soak gelatine in water, then dissolve it in boiling water.

  2. Stir the dissolved gelatine into the rhubarb mixture and beat briskly for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Add almond flavouring and cochineal for color.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a mould soaked in cold water and place in a cool area to set.

  2. Serve on a glass dish with cream, Devonshire cream, or custard.

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. Lemon + almondtop 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
Provides the main fruit flavour and body once cooked down and softened.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps balance its sourness.
Lemon
Adds acidity and brightness that lifts the rhubarb flavour.

The step that matters

Stirring the dissolved gelatine into the rhubarb. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and evenly blended, or it sets in streaks or lumps. Briskly beating the mixture distributes it evenly before the mixture begins to cool and thicken.

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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