No. 3204

Rhubarb Pie and Rhubarb with Cream

Tarte a la Rhubarbe et Rhubarbe a la Creme

Take very ripe rhubarb, suppress the leaves, peel and cut into pieces one inch long; arrange them in layers with sugar between each on a tin pie plate lined with short paste (No. 135), so as to form a dome. Moisten the edges of the paste on the plate and cover the whole with a flat of puff paste (No. 146) the same diameter as the plate, fastening it firmly to the moistened under edge, then pare off all the paste beyond the border, gash it all around with a small knife, egg the surface and trace a rosette on top with the tip of a knife. Bake in a hot oven for forty-five minutes.

Rhubarb with Cream.—Choose some very green rhubarb, suppress the leaves and hard parts near the roots, peel and cut in half-inch squares. Put one pound of this prepared rhubarb in a copper pan with a little water, a small piece of cinnamon and a sliced lemon. Put the pan on the fire, and when sufficiently cooked sweeten it according to taste. Remove from the fire, allow to cool slightly, and add a tablespoonful of cornstarch or fecula, diluted in a little cold water; put back on the fire to thicken it, take out the slices of lemon and the cinnamon. Pour the rhubarb in mousseline molds (No. 1, Fig. 138), allow to cool and unmold; or it may be served in a dish. Serve separately some sweet cream or else incorporate into it an equal quantity of whipped cream.

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For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Two rhubarb preparations from Ranhofer's The Epicurean: a double-crusted pie and a moulded stewed rhubarb served with cream. Both assume a professional kitchen with numbered paste recipes on hand and a cook who knows how much sugar rhubarb needs.

The leaves are not optional"Suppress the leaves" means cut them off and throw them out. Rhubarb leaf blades carry high levels of oxalic acid and soluble oxalates and are genuinely poisonous; only the stalks are food. Trim the hard woody base near the crown as well.
A hot ovenRead roughly 400-450F. Forty-five minutes at that heat is a long bake for a domed fruit pie; check the top crust at 25 minutes and tent it with foil if it is colouring faster than the fruit is softening.
Sugar is left to youNo quantity is given. For a nine-inch pie of raw rhubarb, 3/4 to 1 cup of sugar layered between the pieces is the usual modern range, and rhubarb varies enormously in sharpness.
Thickening the pieThe pie has no starch at all, only sugar between the layers. Rhubarb throws a great deal of liquid, so expect a loose, juicy filling; a couple of tablespoons of flour or cornstarch tossed with the sugar will give a filling that holds a cut slice.
Two different pastesNo. 135 is the short paste for the lining, No. 146 the puff paste for the lid. A store-bought all-butter shortcrust below and a rolled sheet of puff above reproduces the intended contrast of a sturdy base and a flaky, gashed top.
FeculaAn old term for starch, in period usage most often potato starch. It tends to set more clearly and glossily than cornstarch, which the recipe offers as the alternative; either works for the moulded rhubarb.
The copper panCopper pans in professional kitchens of this period were normally tin-lined. Do not stew acidic rhubarb in bare copper, which can leach; use stainless steel or enamelled cast iron.
Mousseline mouldsSmall fluted individual moulds, roughly the size of a dariole or a ramekin. Rinse them in cold water before filling so the set rhubarb releases cleanly.
YieldThe pie serves six to eight. The pound of rhubarb in the second preparation fills four to six small moulds, depending on size.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a record of the restaurant's repertoire, and its French headings sit oddly on a plant that Americans of the period more often called "pie plant." Rhubarb reached western kitchens as a medicinal root long before it was eaten as a stalk, and cheap sugar in the nineteenth century is generally credited with turning it into a dessert crop; by Ranhofer's day it was among the earliest fruits of the spring in northeastern markets, arriving weeks before berries.