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Dessert

Green Gooseberry Tart

A tart filled with stewed green gooseberries in a pastry shell, topped with puff pastry and glazed with beaten egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Green Gooseberry Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Place the gooseberries in a porcelain kettle with enough water to prevent burning.

  2. Stew slowly until the gooseberries break down.

  3. Remove from heat, sweeten well, and let cool.

Assemble and glaze

  1. Pour the cooled mixture into the pastry shell.

  2. Cover with a top crust of puff pastry.

  3. Brush the top with beaten egg and return to the oven to glaze for 3 minutes.

  4. Serve cold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gooseberries
Provide the tart's main fruit filling, which breaks down into a tart, thick mass when stewed.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharp acidity of the gooseberries.
Egg
Brushed on the top crust, it promotes browning and a glossy glaze.

The step that matters

Stewing the gooseberries slowly. Gentle heat lets the fruit break down evenly into a smooth filling; too much heat or too little water can scorch the fruit onto the bottom of the pan.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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