I know not everyone feels this way, but I am — and always have been — a very big fan of rhubarb. There’s just no other flavor like it; I love it. And that’s precisely why I was very excited to come across this old recipe card! With just four ingredients and not a lot of instruction, I wasn’t totally confident that this Rhubarb Cream Pie would come out a success, but luckily with The Recipe Tin Project, I’m often surprised by the outcome. And in this case, it was a pleasant surprise.

This card came to me through the Recipe Tin Project, which is a project where I cook my way through an old recipe tin full of vintage recipes. But you might have already guessed that. It’s chock full of old recipe cards, most of which seem to be from the ’60s and ’70s, though some are older. I love food history, and the idea is to breathe new life into these recipes from the past and maybe learn a technique or two from them along the way. The recipes come from different people with different handwriting; some have sweet illustrations while others are on plain (often smudged and stained) index cards.

I love the simple index cards just as much as the ones that have sweet little illustrations on them, and I especially love the ones that have a little character. This one sure does. Delicious “Rhubard” Cream Pie is scrawled across the top and rhubarb is misspelled one more time in the ingredients. The handwriting looks a little shaky, the way some people’s begins to with age. There isn’t a lot of instruction to go off here and it’s even missing an initial baking temp, but that’s just the way it goes with homemade, handwritten recipe cards. Sometimes you just have to do your best with what you have.

I intended to.

The first part was easy enough: Blend together flour and sugar. Add eggs and lemon juice and stir until a thick paste is formed. I did all of that, guessing at the amount of lemon juice, but my mixture was much more liquidy than a paste. As in, it was not a paste at all. No matter, we press on.

Then, the card says to arrange the diced rhubarb in a pie shell and bake.

It doesn’t say where to add the “paste.” It doesn’t say what temperature to bake at… so here is where I started using my best judgement. I poured the “custard” over the diced rhubarb…

… I pre-heated the oven to 400°F and I baked it for twenty minutes. Then I reduced the temp to 350°F and baked it for twenty minutes more. It worked!

The final pie was not quite as thick as I was expecting but it definitely lived up to its name of “delicious rhubarb cream.” There’s no cream IN the pie, but you get a custard filling that’s very creamy and just sweet enough to balance the sour nature of the rhubarb.

You usually see rhubarb paired with some other fruit so I loved that this pie is all about the rhubarb. Well, and the custard.

It’s a delightful, retro-feeling pie. What would I change? I’d add a touch of vanilla and a pinch of salt, but otherwise, not a thing.