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Cooked Rhubarb
Wash peel and cut rhubarb in 1 inch pieces. If pink and tender, do not peel, as the color is much better if skin is left on. Add just enough water to keep from burning. When nearly done, add sugar to taste. Cook until tender. 6 pears 2 cups boiling water
A bare-bones stewed rhubarb, written for cooks who already knew the fruit. Two things need saying: the sugar goes in late, and the stray line at the end belongs to another recipe.
- The orphan line"6 pears 2 cups boiling water" has nothing to do with the rhubarb. It appears to be a stray fragment of an adjacent recipe, and can be ignored.
- Leaves and endsUse the stalks only. Rhubarb leaves contain high levels of oxalic acid and are not edible — trim them off along with any dried, woody base and discard them.
- Water means very little water"Just enough to keep from burning" is roughly 2 to 3 tablespoons for a pound of stalks. Rhubarb is about 95 percent water and collapses into its own juice within minutes; more liquid gives you soup.
- Sugar late, and whyThis is the hinge. Sugar added at the start draws liquid out and helps the pieces hold shape but slows softening; added when the stalks are nearly tender, as here, it dissolves into an already thickened purée. Follow the original if you want a soft compote, add it early if you want distinct pieces.
- How much sugar"To taste" runs from 1/3 to 3/4 cup granulated sugar per pound of trimmed stalks, depending on the variety and your tolerance for sourness. Stir it in off the heat first, taste, then return to the heat.
- TimingCut into 1-inch pieces, field rhubarb is generally tender in 8 to 12 minutes over gentle heat; forced hothouse stalks can go in about 5. Stop while a few pieces still hold their edges -- carryover heat finishes them.
- PeelingThe advice to leave the skin on pink stalks is sound and applies to most rhubarb sold today. Peel only thick, green, late-season stalks whose outer layer stays stringy after cooking.
- Yield and servingA pound of stalks makes about 2 cups cooked, serving four. Serve warm or chilled with cream, over rice pudding, or as the fruit layer under a crumble.
Rhubarb reached British and American kitchens as a medicinal plant long before it was eaten -- the dried root of Asian species was an established purgative in the European pharmacopoeia, and it is the stalk of the garden species that became a dessert, generally traced to the spread of cheap sugar and hothouse forcing in the nineteenth century. It was known as "pieplant" in American seed catalogues and cookbooks, and because it came up in early spring, ahead of every tree fruit and berry, stewed rhubarb was the first fresh fruit dish of the year in much of the north.