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Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie made with rhubarb, sugar, egg yolks, flour, and butter.

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 flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 670 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rhubarb

  1. Cover the rhubarb with boiling water and let it stand while preparing the crust.

  2. Drain the water from the rhubarb.

Make and bake the pie

  1. In a bowl, combine the drained rhubarb, beaten egg yolks, sugar, flour, and butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pie crust and bake until set.

  3. Serve while still warm.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 flavor and the bulk of the pie filling.
Egg yolks
Help the filling thicken and set when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and adds body to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the juices so the filling holds its shape when sliced.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Draining the rhubarb. Rhubarb releases a lot of liquid as it cooks. Draining it well keeps the filling from becoming watery and stops the flour and yolks from being diluted, so the pie can set properly.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, 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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