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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A baked pie with rhubarb, sugar, salt, nutmeg, flour, and a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Rhubarb Pie

Why it works: Rhubarb and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 177 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cut the large stalks where the leaves begin and remove the outer skin.

  3. In a pie dish, layer the rhubarb pieces nearly an inch deep.

Assemble and bake

  1. Sprinkle the sugar, salt, and nutmeg over the rhubarb, then dust the rhubarb with flour.

  2. Cover with a rich pie crust, cut a slit in the center of the crust, and trim the edges.

  3. Bake until the pie loosens from the dish.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together177 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. 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 bulk that the filling is built around.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps draw out its juices.
Flour
Thickens the juices released by the rhubarb as the pie bakes.

The step that matters

Dust the rhubarb with flour. Flour has to coat the fruit evenly so it can absorb the released juices and thicken them; unevenly dusted pieces can leave pockets of runny filling or raw starch.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, 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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