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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A pie made with finely chopped rhubarb, boiled in water, mixed with egg yolk, flour, and sugar, baked with a crust and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the rhubarb very fine and pour boiling water over it to cover.

  2. Let it stand for 2 minutes, then drain.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolk, flour, and sugar to the rhubarb and mix well.

Bake and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake.

  2. Beat the egg white to make a meringue, pour it over the pie, and brown it.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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 tart flavour and the bulk of the filling.
Egg yolk
Thickens the filling and adds richness as it sets during baking.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape when cut.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps the filling set.
Egg white
Beaten into a meringue, it forms a light topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Beaten egg white needs to be spread over the hot filling and browned fully; underbaked meringue can weep or stay soft, while overbaking can make it tough and dry.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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