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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie, with Custard

A pie made with rhubarb and suet crust, served with rich custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 546 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie, with Custard

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 the rhubarb

  1. Remove the skin from the rhubarb, reducing the weight to about 3½ pounds, and cut it into 1‑inch pieces.

  2. If thick, split the sticks lengthwise.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with the suet crust, place a small cup in the center, add the rhubarb, scatter a few pieces of lemon peel, and cover with more crust.

  2. Bake in a 400 °F (200 °C) oven for 45 minutes.

Make the custard and serve

  1. Prepare 1 pint of rich custard using custard powder.

  2. Sweeten the custard to taste with either moist sugar or finely powdered loaf sugar.

  3. Pour it over the pie 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 + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together546 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

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

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

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

Rhubarb
Provides the tart flavour and the bulk of the filling that cooks down under the crust.
Suet crust
Forms the sealed pastry that holds the filling in and bakes into a rich, sturdy casing.
Custard
Adds a smooth, creamy sauce that contrasts with the tart, cooked fruit.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard to balance the sharpness of the rhubarb.

The step that matters

Bake in a 400 °F (200 °C) oven for 45 minutes. Rhubarb releases a lot of liquid as it cooks. The pie needs enough time for the crust to brown and the filling to soften, so the bottom is not soggy.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, 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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