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Steamed Rhubarb

A simple dish of rhubarb steamed with sugar, optionally steeped in boiling water if sour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Rhubarb and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,852 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Steamed Rhubarb

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cook

  1. Place rhubarb in a double boiler.

  2. Add sugar, using 1 cup for every pint of fruit.

  3. Cook until tender without stirring.

Finish and serve

  1. If rhubarb is very sour, pour boiling water over it.

  2. Let stand for 5 minutes.

  3. Drain and steam.

  4. Serve cold.

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 + 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 main fruit body and its natural tartness, and softens into tender pieces when cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and balances its sourness, while helping draw out juice as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook until tender without stirring. Stirring breaks the rhubarb pieces apart as they soften. Leaving them undisturbed lets the pieces hold their shape while the sugar draws out juice and the fruit cooks through evenly.

“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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