Rhubarb tart is a tart filled with

rhubarb Rhubarb is the fleshy, edible stalks ( petioles) of species and hybrids (culinary rhubarb) of ''Rheum'' in the family Polygonaceae, which are cooked and used for food. The whole plant – a herbaceous perennial growing from short, thick rhizo ...

Mrs Beeton Isabella Mary Beeton ( Mayson; 14 March 1836 – 6 February 1865), known as Mrs Beeton, was an English journalist, editor and writer. Her name is particularly associated with her first book, the 1861 work ''Mrs Beeton's Book of Household ...

's recipe requires half a pound of puff pastry, five large sticks of rhubarb and quarter of a pound of sugar with a little lemon juice and

lemon zest Zest is a food ingredient that is prepared by scraping or cutting from the rind of unwaxed citrus fruits such as lemon, orange, citron, and lime. Zest is used to add flavor to foods. In terms of fruit anatomy, the zest is obtained from the fl ...

to taste. This is baked for 30 to 45 minutes and serves five people at a cost of ninepence. Rhubarb was used medicinally as a purgative and this caused it to have unpleasant associations. To make the dish more acceptable, rhubarb tart was sometimes renamed Spring apples in the 19th century.

In the arts

Rhubarb tart was celebrated in the radio show '' I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again'' in which it was a running joke. Examples included the pun Rhubarb Tart of Omar Khayyam ''( Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'') and ''The Rhubarb Tart Song'' which went: ... A rhubarb what? A rhubarb tart! A whatbarb tart? A rhubarb tart! I want another slice of rhubarb tart! ...

Notable consumers

Friedrich Ludwig Georg von Raumer Friedrich Ludwig Georg von Raumer (14 May 1781 – 14 June 1873) was a German historian. He was the first scientific historian to popularise history in German. He travelled extensively and served in German legislative bodies. Biography He was bo ...

, who wrote in his account of England that he was a "very industrious eater of rhubarb tart".

References

{{reflist Tarts Rhubarb