Name: Compote of Rhubarb
Ingredients: 1 pound rhubarb stalks, pared and cut into short lengths; ¼ pint (½ cup) water; 5 ounces good lump sugar (or 6 ounces if fruit is very tart)

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 ↓

Compote of Rhubarb

Ingredients

1 pound rhubarb stalks, pared and cut into short lengths
¼ pint (½ cup) water
5 ounces good lump sugar (or 6 ounces if fruit is very tart)

Directions

Boil the water gently for 10 minutes with the sugar.
Add the rhubarb and let it simmer for about 10 minutes.

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.

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 tart fruit base and its fibrous texture softens as it simmers.
Sugar: Sweetens the fruit and helps it keep its shape and form a syrup.

“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.