The Bitterness Will Sing: Rhubarb Season in New England

I didn’t plan to buy rhubarb. 

It wasn’t on the list. Not even on my mind. But there it was at Pete’s Stand in Walpole, piled high in a lopsided cardboard box with stalks tangled like old electric cords.

I picked up a bundle and held it close, confused by my own impulse. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it and I’m not sure I’ve ever cooked anything with rhubarb.I just knew I couldn’t leave it behind. 

That’s how rhubarb works around here. It finds you.

Rhubarb is one of those things that feels older than recipes. It shows up before the strawberries, before the soil is really warm. It forces its way up through the cold, unbothered with whether or not you’re ready. You don’t cultivate rhubarb so much as inherit it. It grows in corners behind barns and on the edges of memory. It waits.

Rhubarb isn’t native to New England, but it’s become one of the region’s most iconic spring ingredients. A cold-hardy perennial, it originally comes from Siberia and was prized in ancient China for its medicinal roots long before it was ever considered food. It traveled west through Europe along trade routes, and by the 18th century, garden varieties of rhubarb with edible stalks began appearing in English and Scottish kitchen gardens. Immigrants carried those roots with them, literally, when they crossed the Atlantic. By the early 1800s rhubarb had taken hold in New England soil, especially in the northern reaches of Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Its ability to survive harsh winters made it a staple of homestead gardens.

In many rural New England towns it grows in backyard borders, alongside chicken coops and kitchen steps, spreading quietly from plant to plant, neighbor to neighbor. Though technically a vegetable, it was almost always sweetened and baked into pies, crisps, jams, and compotes and often paired with strawberries to soften its bite. 

Over time, rhubarb came to symbolize a certain kind of New England resilience: tough, unglamorous, but deeply rooted. A little bitter on its own, but when matched with the right ingredients (or the right memory) it becomes something almost magical.

Rhubarb is a vegetable pretending to be a fruit. It’s part of the knotty, thrifty inheritance of this region, like vinegar-based pie crusts and vinegar-tempered tempers.

 It became a staple of the working poor: it grows where little else will, needs almost no tending, and lasts for decades once rooted. During the Depression, it filled tart shells and glass jars in place of things sweeter, brighter, easier.

 It’s the food of endurance.

Rhubarb stalks pushing up through the soil in early Spring.

One of the most worn recipe cards I own is for a strawberry rhubarb pie written in my mom’s bubbly script. She was rhubarb’s super fan and worked hard to install an appreciation for it in me. She sliced it raw once, fed it to me dipped in sugar from a shallow plate. “Just try it,” she said. I did. My mouth clenched. My eyes watered. The sugar wasn’t enough and it took a couple years for me to come round.

But maybe that’s what it means to be from New England. You learn early how to make do with something difficult, how to bite into bitterness and pretend you like it.

I know people who hate it. I don’t blame them. On its own, rhubarb is sharp, vegetal, and vaguely medicinal. It needs coaxing. It demands sweetness. But only just enough. 

Overdo it and you lose the soul of the thing. 

That’s the trick: pair it well. Strawberries, of course, but also raspberries, oranges, ginger, elderflower, even black pepper. You learn to meet it where it is. You learn to let it stay itself.

Isn’t that the story of most people I know from here?

We don’t warm up easily. We measure our joy in teaspoons. But when we find the right pairing: a moment, a person, a memory—we become something you never saw coming. We open up. We soften. We shine.

I still don’t know what I’ll make. Maybe a compote. Maybe a crumble. Maybe nothing right away. The bundle’s still in my fridge, wrapped in a damp tea towel like a secret.

 But I keep thinking about it. How I couldn’t leave it behind and that’s probably the point.

The not knowing yet. Just showing up. Just carrying it home and trusting that the magic will come.

And eventually, when the pairing is right, the bitterness will sing.