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Dessert

Good Rhubarb Pie

A fruit pie made with rhubarb, sugar, egg, butter, and two pie crusts, baked until golden.

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

Good 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).

Make and fill

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

  2. Dot the filling with small pieces of butter.

Cover and bake

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

  2. Cut slits in the top crust to allow steam to escape.

  3. 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.

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 that the sugar balances in the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and offsets the tartness of the rhubarb.
Egg
Binds the filling so it sets rather than running when sliced.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the filling.

The step that matters

Cut slits in the top crust. Vents steam as the filling heats, so pressure does not build and force juices out or split the crust. Rhubarb releases a lot of liquid, so venting helps the pie hold together.

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.

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