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Dessert

Plain Rhubarb Pie

A simple pie filled with rhubarb, sugar, and flour or cornstarch, topped with a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Plain 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. Line a pie pan with the bottom pie crust.

Fill and cover

  1. Fill the crust with the rhubarb pieces.

  2. Sprinkle the sugar over the rhubarb, then sprinkle with flour or cornstarch.

  3. Cover with the top pie crust.

Bake

  1. Bake until the crust is light brown and the rhubarb is tender.

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 + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 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 flavour and the main filling that cooks until tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps draw out its juices.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the juices released by the rhubarb as the pie bakes.
Pie crust
Forms the bottom and top shell that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the thickener over the fruit. Flour or cornstarch must be spread evenly over the rhubarb so the juices thicken as they heat. Clumps can leave pockets of raw starch, and rhubarb releases a lot of liquid, so an uneven layer can make the filling runny in places.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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