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Dessert

Rhubarb Marmalade for Tarts

A sweet preserve made from rhubarb, oranges, lemon, and sugar, used in tarts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rhubarb Marmalade for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wipe and cut rhubarb into small pieces, about ½ inch long.

  2. Place rhubarb in a stew-pan with water and sugar.

Make the marmalade

  1. Grate the rind of the oranges into the stew-pan.

  2. Remove the white and pips from the oranges, cut them small, and add to the stew-pan.

  3. Add lemon juice and lemon peel to the stew-pan.

  4. Cook on the gas stove for 1½ hours.

Finish

  1. Let it cool before using for tarts.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Rhubarb + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

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 tart flavour and the fruit body that the marmalade is built on.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the marmalade and, as it dissolves and thickens during cooking, helps it set.
Oranges
Contribute aromatic rind oil and pulp, adding bitterness and body to the marmalade.
Lemon
Adds acidity and extra pectin, which brightens the flavour and helps the marmalade set.

The step that matters

Cook on the gas stove for 1½ hours. Long, gentle cooking drives off water and concentrates sugar and pectin until the mixture thickens. Undercooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can scorch the sugar and darken the flavour.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Peppermintfits about as well
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, orange, lemon. 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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