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Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie with rhubarb, sugar, egg, butter, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Rhubarb Pie

Why it works: Rhubarb and walnut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 73 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Assemble the pie

  1. In a bowl, combine chopped rhubarb, sugar, and egg, then mix well and pour the filling into one of the pie crusts.

  2. Dot the filling with the walnut-sized piece of butter.

  3. Cover with the second pie crust and seal the edges.

  4. Cut slits in the top crust for steam to escape.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30-40 minutes or until the crust is golden brown.

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 + walnuttop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together73 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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 main filling and a tart, acidic flavor that balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the rhubarb's tartness while helping the filling thicken.
Egg
Binds the filling and sets during baking so it holds together when sliced.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a rounder, softer flavor.

The step that matters

Cut slits in the top crust. Steam builds up inside a sealed pie as it bakes. Slits let it escape, so the crust does not split and the filling does not bubble out and make the pie soggy.

Swap the rhubarb

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Rhubarbthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, walnut, butter. 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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