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Lemon Rhubarb Pie

A pie with stewed rhubarb custard filling topped with meringue.

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

Lemon Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the custard

  1. In a double boiler, combine stewed rhubarb, egg yolks, butter, sugar, and flour.

  2. Cook until thick like custard.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baked pie crust.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then sweeten and spread over the pie filling.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the meringue is 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. 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling into a custard and add richness to the rhubarb.
Egg whites
Whip into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and helps the meringue become stable and glossy.
Stewed rhubarb
Provides the tart flavour and bulk of the filling.
Flour
Stabilises the custard so it thickens without becoming runny.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick like custard. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the filling is undercooked it stays runny and will soak the crust. Cooking gently in a double boiler helps prevent the yolks from scrambling.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

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