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Dessert

Raisin and Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie with rhubarb, raisins, lemon, sugar, and egg, baked in a double crust.

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

Raisin and Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and assemble the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the finely chopped rhubarb, seeded raisins, sugar, lemon juice, grated lemon rind, and beaten egg.

  2. Pour the mixture into one pie crust and cover with the second crust.

Bake

  1. Bake until the crust is golden and the filling is bubbly.

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. Rhubarb + raisintop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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 bulk that gives the filling its body.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the tartness of the rhubarb and lemon.
Egg
Binds the filling so it sets softly when baked.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and sharpens the rhubarb.

The step that matters

Bake until the crust is golden and the filling is bubbly. Rhubarb releases a lot of liquid as it heats. The filling must bubble through so the egg sets and starch and sugar thicken the juices, otherwise the pie can be runny when cut.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, raisin, sugar, egg. 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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