Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhubarb Pie

A pie filled with stewed rhubarb, sugar, butter, and egg, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Rhubarb Pie

Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stew the rhubarb in a small amount of water until soft.

  2. Let it cool slightly, then add sugar and stir until smooth.

  3. Add the butter while the rhubarb is still hot enough to melt it.

  4. To the rhubarb mixture, add one beaten egg (or two if it seems thin).

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared pie crust and bake.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rhubarb + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,852 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Rhubarb + buttertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rhubarb
Provides the tart flavour and the bulk of the filling once stewed soft.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart rhubarb and balances its acidity.
Egg
Thickens the filling as it bakes, giving it a set, custard-like body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the egg to the rhubarb mixture. Eggs set when heated, so the filling must be cool enough that the egg does not scramble on contact. If the mixture is still very hot, the egg can curdle instead of thickening it smoothly. Check consistency before deciding whether to add a second egg.

Swap the rhubarb

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

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

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

More rhubarb pie recipes

Strawberry 5 See all 198 →

You might also like

Rhubarb MarmaladeRhubarb Marmalade35 recipesRhubarb JellyRhubarb Jelly28 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes