Stewed Rhubarb
Select the strawberry rhubarb in preference to the white; wash it, and unless it is very old, do not peel it. Simply remove the ends and cut the stalk into small pieces. Pour boiling water on the rhubarb; drain and put it in a saucepan over the fire, covering it well with sugar and adding only enough water to keep it from burning. Cook until soft but not until the pieces have lost their identity. The quantity of sugar will have to be varied according to the age of the rhubarb.
A bare-bones method that assumes the cook knows what rhubarb should look like when it is done. Two details carry the dish: the sugar goes on before the water, and the cooking stops while the pieces still hold their shape.
- The leaf ends"Remove the ends" means trimming both the dry base and any trace of leaf. Rhubarb leaves contain oxalic acid in quantity and are not eaten; only the stalk is food. Bunches sold today are usually already trimmed.
- Strawberry rhubarbNot a variety crossed with strawberries but the deep red field rhubarb, as against the paler green-and-white sort. The red stalks give a better colour in the dish; the green sort cooks to a drab khaki, though stalk colour is not a reliable guide to tenderness or flavour.
- The boiling-water rinseScalding and draining before cooking softens the outer fibre slightly and washes off surface grit. It is optional with young forced rhubarb and worth doing with thick late-season stalks.
- Sugar first, water barelyCovering the fruit with sugar draws out juice within a few minutes, so almost no added water is needed — two or three tablespoons for a pound is plenty. Too much water gives you stewed rhubarb in a pool rather than in syrup.
- How much sugarThe original leaves this open on purpose. Reckon on 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar per pound of trimmed stalks: the lower end for thin spring rhubarb, the upper for coarse, older stalks late in the season.
- Pan and heatUse a non-reactive pan — stainless or enamel, not bare aluminium or unlined copper, which rhubarb's acid will pit and discolour. Keep the heat low and resist stirring; a shake of the pan is enough.
- Doneness and timingOn a modern burner this is 5 to 8 minutes from the first simmer. "Soft but not until the pieces have lost their identity" is the whole instruction: pull it off while the cubes still sit up, since they soften further in the residual heat.
- YieldA pound of trimmed rhubarb makes roughly two cups stewed, enough for four as a spooned dessert or alongside cream, custard or plain cake.
Rhubarb reached American kitchens as a garden vegetable and was widely called pie plant through the nineteenth century -- it was the first tart thing out of the ground in spring, well ahead of any real fruit, and cookbooks treated it as a fruit accordingly. The instruction to skip peeling unless the stalk is old reflects a period when rhubarb came from the garden or a market stall at a known point in its season, rather than year-round from a cooler; forced early rhubarb needs no peeling at all, while August stalks are stringy enough to want it.