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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie Deluxe

A sweet pie made with sliced rhubarb, eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and rhubarb match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 276 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie Deluxe

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, vanilla, and salt until light.

Make the filling

  1. Add the sugar, baking powder, and flour; mix until well combined.

  2. Stir in the sliced rhubarb.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pastry-lined pie tin.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is set, then reduce the heat to 350°F (175°C) and bake until the rhubarb is tender and the pie is lightly browned.

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. Vanilla + rhubarbtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Flour + rhubarbtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set into a custard-like structure as the pie bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the rhubarb.
Flour
Thickens the filling so it holds together when sliced.
Sliced rhubarb
Provides the tart flavor and the main body of the pie.
Baking powder
Lifts the batter slightly so it is lighter in texture.

The step that matters

Reduce the oven heat after the crust is set. Staying at 400°F for the whole bake can brown the crust too fast before the rhubarb softens. Lowering the heat lets the filling cook through gently and tender without burning the edges.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, vanilla, 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.

More rhubarb pie recipes

Strawberry 5 See all 198 →

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