Why it works: Currant and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes. The science ↓
Currant Pie or Tart
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the filling
Stew the currants for a few minutes.
Strain them through a sieve and mix in sugar while hot.
Set the mixture aside to cool.
Assemble and bake
Line small plates with puff pastry.
Fill the pastry with the currant mixture.
Bake until the crust is done at 350°F (175°C).
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.
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Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,256 recipes
Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Currants
- Provide the main fruit flavour and tartness, and their juice thickens with sugar into the filling.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the tart currant filling and helps it set as it cools.
- Puff pastry
- Forms the flaky, golden crust that holds the filling.
The step that matters
Strain and cool the filling before filling the pastry. Currants release a lot of liquid. Straining removes excess juice and seeds, and cooling lets the mixture thicken, so it does not soak or tear the pastry during baking.
“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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