Rhubarb and custard go together like cheese and pickle, or Fanny and Johnnie: whether it’s served up in steaming, stodgy spoonfuls in the school dinner hall or elegant tartlets in the royal kitchens, it’s a classic double act. Simultaneously tart and tangy and rich and sweet, to say nothing of the delicious contrast between the juicy crunch of the stems and the wobbly, creamy custard, or the striking pairing of vivid pink and yolk yellow. Basically, it’s a pleasure that works on every level.
This tart’s sunny good looks make it an excellent choice of dessert for Easter or other celebrations this weekend, which is also pretty much your last chance to enjoy Yorkshire forced rhubarb before it disappears for the year later this month. Miss it, and you’ll have to content yourself with a bag of rhubarb and custard boiled sweets instead. Which isn’t the worst fate, admittedly.
The rhubarb
Though you can certainly make this recipe with the sturdier, greener outdoor field rhubarb, which is in season throughout the summer, it will be more pleasing to the eye if you can get hold of the forced stuff, which is grown (as consensually as is possible with a plant) in dark sheds from December to mid-April, giving it a glorious, ruby colour and a sweeter flavour. Either way, choose your stems by colour, and try to ensure they’re all roughly the same thickness.
Several of the recipes, including those from chefs Gill Meller and Ravneet Gill and even the historian Simon Schama in a recipe published in GQ Eats (“the cookbook for men of seriously good taste”), macerate the rhubarb in sugar before cooking, to draw out excess liquid and add sweetness. This makes sense if, like Saveur magazine’s recipe, you’re planning to stick it in the tart raw and want to avoid it leaking water into the custard, but seeing as most recipes I try bake the rhubarb first, I don’t see much point, especially because I prefer it quite tart. To this end, I love baker and food writer Edd Kimber’s idea, in BBC Good Food magazine, of adding orange juice to the fruit* to bring out this tangy quality. (Schama sautes the macerated rhubarb in butter on the hob, but, as he notes, this is a risky business, because “it disintegrates quickly”, so I’d strongly advise using the oven instead, which you’ll have on for the pastry anyway.)
Rather than adding the cooked rhubarb to the custard for a second bake, as most recipes suggest, I like Kimber and the Ukrainian chef Yurii Pryiemskyi’s approach of arranging it on top of the custard once it has been baked, which not only looks good, but stops the fruit from overcooking (though, unless you like it very crunchy, you will need to bake it for more than the five minutes Pryiemskyi recommends).
My recipe uses the zest of an orange as well as its juice, because the fresh bitterness works well (and waste not want not, as my grandma always used to say), but Meller bakes his with star anise and vanilla, and Pryiemskyi teams his rhubarb with lime and orange zest and juice, vanilla, fresh mint and root ginger, should any of those combinations be of interest. (Interestingly, Niki Segnit writes that “the classic pairings of hot ginger or waxy orange zest originated in the pharmacy as constipation cures and, to my mind, taste like it, only adding insult to the injury of rhubarb at its unfriendliest”. She favours vanilla. Each to their own.)
* yes, I know rhubarb is technically a vegetable
The custard
As I confirmed during my recent dive into the wonderful world of pastel de nata, there’s more than one way to make a baked custard – and several of them are on display here, from Pryiemskyi’s gloriously rich, egg yolk and double cream version to Kimber’s lighter, milk-based recipe that is thickened with cornflour. It’s an excellent excuse to eat as much of the stuff as possible while pondering what works best in this context.
For a start, I’d like as much of a contrast between the custard and the rhubarb as possible, which knocks out Saveur’s take, which is made with a single tablespoon of double cream, four eggs and the sugary juices from the macerated rhubarb, giving a dense, sweet result that’s more like a rhubarb frittata than a custard. By contrast, Pryiemskyi’s tart, from the book of Recipes from Ukraine he co-authored with Simon Boyle in 2020, is so rich and smooth, it’s almost like eating butter; delicious, but not in the quantities I envisage consuming it in.
Kimber is the only person not to bake his custard, thickening it on the stove before pouring it into the baked case, but I miss the firm wobble I enjoy so much in Meller and Schama’s recipes. The latter is interesting, because, though the professor of history and art history at Columbia University calls for double cream, he offers full-fat yoghurt as a substitution, an intriguing notion that I naturally have to try. Despite my scepticism, it works very well, giving a lighter, slightly acidic result more like a cheesecake. I’ll be sticking with Meller’s mixture of cream and milk, though, because I want the rhubarb to be the sour element here, but do give it a go if you like the idea.
Custard can be made with either whole eggs or egg yolks; yolk and white have a similar power to thicken, but yolks give a deeper colour, and a richer, more velvety flavour and texture, while whites will set to a firmer, but less dense, more jellied consistency. I’m very taken with Meller’s smaller, taller tart, which contains a sufficient depth of custard to develop a real wobble, so I’ve opted for a mixture of whole eggs and yolks, because in such quantity yolks alone would be too much, but a certain amount of richness feels apt in a celebratory dish. A little cornflour gives them a helping hand to thicken, though you could use plain flour if you’re not too fussy about texture (cornflour will give silkier results).
Feel free to adjust the sweetness, and indeed the flavouring, if you don’t care for classic vanilla (or care less for it now that you’ve seen the current price) – as ever, I think a grating nutmeg would be nice with custard, while a dash of almond essence would also work well, or you could just leave it plain on the basis that cream and sugar are extremely nice on their own.
The pastry
Almost everyone uses shortcrust of some sort, often enriched with whole eggs (Pryiemskyi and Meller) or yolks (Kimber and Diana Henry) and sugar, while Saveur goes out on a limb with a unsweetened, lard-based version, which I like in theory, but contains so much fat in reality that it melts under the knife. Though this more savoury option appeals, given the sweetness of the custard, I want something crisper and snappier to contrast with the softness within. The more fat a pastry contains, the softer and crumblier the result, so I’ve reduced the butter slightly and used a whole egg, rather than just yolks, as well as a modest amount of caster instead of icing sugar for a slightly crunchy finish.
Schama takes a different approach entirely, deploying a sweet, hot-water-crust pastry, which for some reason is so oily, it will hold together only with the help of quite a lot more flour. Despite this, it ends up pleasingly crisp on top, though I prefer the more delicate snap of shortcrust. Turns out the historian is quite the culinary maverick.
Apart from a pinch of salt, the pastry needs no extra seasoning – the rhubarb should be the predominant flavour – but you could, as Henry does, add vanilla extract, or mix in Meller’s almond extract and lemon zest. However you choose to flavour it, don’t neglect to brush the blind-baked base with the egg whites left over from the filling, because this will form a protective barrier to prevent the pastry becoming any soggier than it needs to be.
The extras
If you really want to impress your guests, or yourself (no judgment here), I’d highly recommend Pryiemskyi’s rhubarb jelly topping, which he pours over the baked stems to cover the top of the tart in a coral-pink layer of joy (jelly and custard is another classic combination, after all), though it does require you to start work a day ahead. An easier win is Kimber’s scatter of chopped pistachios for a flash of green, though I think the tart looks handsome enough with nothing more than a little cooking syrup brushed over the rhubarb to help it shine, while you bask in the reflected glory.
Perfect rhubarb and custard tart
Prep 15 min
Chill 1 hr 20 min+
Cook 1 hr 10 min
Makes 1 x 20cm tart, to serve 6-8
For the pastry
150g plain flour, plus extra to dust
90g cold butter, cubed
¼ tsp fine salt
2 tbsp caster sugar
1 egg, beaten
For the custard
300ml double cream
200ml whole milk
½ vanilla pod, or 1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs and 2 yolks (reserve 1 white for brushing the pastry)
90g caster sugar
2 tbsp cornflour
For the rhubarb
400g forced rhubarb
Zest and juice of 1 orange
60g caster sugar
Start with the pastry. Put the flour in a large bowl or food processor, add the butter and rub or pulse in until it’s well distributed. Mix in the salt and sugar, then the beaten egg, and bring the mix together into a ball (it should be soft, but add a little more flour if it’s sticky). Flatten, wrap and chill for at least an hour. Take out of the fridge 10 minutes before rolling out.
Meanwhile, put the cream and milk in a medium pan on a medium-low heat. If using the vanilla pod, slit it lengthways, then scrape out the seeds into the liquid. Add the pod, too, and bring the milk mixture to just below a simmer.
While it’s heating up, put the eggs and yolks (set the extra white aside for now) in a large heatproof bowl with the sugar and cornflour, and vanilla extract, if using. Whisk until well combined, then pour the hot liquid on to the egg mix, whisking all the time. Pour back into the pan and heat, still whisking, until the custard thickens, then take off the heat and leave to cool.
Trim the rhubarb, then cut it into 2cm pieces. Wash well then arrange, still wet, in a single layer in a baking dish. Scatter over the orange zest and juice, then sprinkle over the sugar.
Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface to about ½cm thick, then fold it in on itself and place in a 20cm wide, loose-based tart tin. Unfold the pastry, making sure it’s square to the sides of the tin, leaving any excess overhanging the sides, then put in the fridge for 20 minutes. Heat the oven, and a baking tray near the top, to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6 and put the rhubarb in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until tender, but still holding its shape.
Trim away the pastry’s overhanging edges, then line it with baking paper and baking beans/dried beans or raw rice, making sure they come right up the sides to support the pastry. Put on the hot tray and bake for 15 minutes, until lightly golden on top. Lift out the paper and beans, then bake for another five minutes to brown the base. Whisk the reserved egg white to loosen, brush a little over the base of the tart, then return it to the oven for two minutes to seal. Turn down the oven 150C (130C fan)/300F/gas 2.
Pour the custard into the case, removing the vanilla pod first, if necessary, then bake for 30-40 minutes, until set on top but still a little wobbly in the middle – be careful not to overcook it. Remove and set aside to cool.
Once the rhubarb and the tart are completely cool, arrange the rhubarb in concentric circles on top, shaking off any syrup before doing so. Use the excess syrup to brush the top of the rhubarb, then slice and serve.
Rhubarb and custard: an old favourite, or one that brings back bad memories of school dinners? If you’re a fan, what else do you like to do with this polarising vegetable?
