This page is about the plant grown in many British gardens and allotments, that is a common feature of British cooking. For the plant used in traditional medicine, see our page on Chinese Rhubarb, Rheum palmatum.
What the British generally think of as rhubarb, Rheum rhabarbarum, is grown in many gardens and allotments, and commercially in the now famous ‘Rhubarb Triangle’ in Yorkshire, where the first crop of the year is harvested by candlelight.
Rhubarb is very easy to grow, needing little attention once established, and produces edible stems year after year. The large deeply veined dark green leaves rise on rose-pink stems from a root-stock that emerges above ground after winter. Rhubarb does best in semi-shade, and can be ‘forced’ into producing stems earlier by being grown under a cover – old terracotta rhubarb forcers from Victorian times are much sought after, but an upturned bucket works just as well.
The stems are edible, but always discard the leaves. Rhubarb leaves are extremely toxic to humans and animals, and should be composted or put in the waste bin: composting breaks down the poisonous oxalic acid, and it continues to decompose in the soil.
Despite being a staple for puddings in Britain, the earliest recipes for rhubarb written in English date from the 18th century. According to records about planting in Italy, rhubarb was not actually grown in Western Europe until the 16th century, though it was grown earlier than that in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia.
Medicinal Uses
The root of Chinese Rhubarb is used in traditional and modern herbal medicine. Unknown in Europe until the Middle Ages, it eventually reached Europe, as a very expensive medicinal drug, in the 14th century.
Our familiar rhubarb might, for convenience, be called Garden Rhubarb, as it is so widely grown in gardens and allotments. It also arrived in Europe during the Middle Ages, but is not used in herbal medicines.
However, rhubarb has considerable value for a healthy diet. It contains Vitamin K, which is vital for bone health and for blood clotting, aiding the healing of wounds. It also contains Calcium, again essential for building and maintaining bone health; and Vitamin C, supporting immunity and helping to promote the absorption of iron, a main ingredient in our red blood cells – iron deficiency is a cause of anaemia. In addition, rhubarb is an excellent source of fibre, needed to maintain gut health.
Culinary Uses
Rhubarb is a vegetable, but we treat it like a fruit, albeit one that is naturally rather sour, and generally needs sweetening to make it palatable. Rhubarb was sometimes referred to as Spring Fruit, especially in early recipe books. Pink ‘sticks’ of rhubarb are a familiar cooking ingredient in British desserts – rhubarb and custard, rhubarb pie, rhubarb fool – the last being essentially a posh version of the first! Fools are made very simply, being basically a concoction of cream and softened fruit, though they were originally made with custard (using eggs and vanilla, not powdered or out of a can!)
It is rarely eaten raw, though older folk may remember being given a stick to dip in a cone of sugar. Similarly, a traditional favourite confectionery was Rhubarb and Custard sweets, though there is not a trace of rhubarb, nor custard, in these. The sour taste comes from tartaric acid, and the sweetness from sugar, while the colours usually derive from beetroot and turmeric. (NB: chewy sweets of this name are not what the British child of the 60s and 70s remembers – those were hard, ‘boiled’ sweets),
Hannah Glasse, who published The complete confectioner in 1760 (and mentioned that she used plain English so that servants would understand her recipes), wrote: ‘… these tarts may be thought very odd, but they are very fine ones and have a pretty flavour‘. A century later, Mrs Beeton’s 1861 publication, the Book of Household Management, included a recipe for a rather substantial Rhubarb Suet Pudding, involving a mere “4 or 5 sticks of rhubarb”, but also 4oz / 113g of sugar and 12oz / 340g of suet pastry. Not one for the weight-watcher!
A rare hand-written 19th century recipe book, held in the National Library of Scotland, has three rhubarb recipes – a complicated pie, requiring the rhubarb to be cooked ‘into a marmalade’ with a number of other ingredients before being put in the pastry case; a ‘Spring Fool’, substituting rhubarb for the more usual (summer) gooseberries; and a savoury soup.
Rhubarb is still used in savoury dishes – a quick search on the internet will produce, alongside many desserts, cakes and other sweet confections, a number of rhubarb soups, curries, chutneys and sauces, paired with everything from chicken to cheese and from prawns to pork. It can also be used to flavour gins and cocktails.
Myth and Magic
Rhubarb was grown in Russia along the river Volga, which has the ancient name Rha. The Latin word barbarum means ‘foreign’, and one theory is that from ‘foreign plant from the Volga region’ we get the common name rhubarb.
In Russian mythology, rhubarb was believed to attract magical power to itself, and witches such as Baba Yaga used rhubarb sticks in the creation of spells and potions.
Acknowledgments – thanks to the following for much of this information
www.gardenersworld.com
www.gardenmyths.com
www.digital.nls.uk
www.hollandandbarrett.com
www.holstmuseum.org.uk
www.oxfoodblog.wordpress.com
www.newcitywitchescocktailcoven.com
