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Dessert

Cranberry Tarts

Cranberry tarts made with stewed cranberries, sugar, optional spice, and puff pastry, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cranberry Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Stew the cranberries with the water until soft.

  2. Strain through a sieve.

  3. Mix in the sugar and optional spice while hot.

  4. Let cool completely.

Assemble

  1. Line small plates with puff pastry.

  2. Create a rim with the same dough.

  3. Fill the plates with the cranberry mixture.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is golden.

  2. Line plates with a rich crust.

  3. Bake for 10-15 minutes until done.

  4. Fill with preserved fruit.

  5. Brush with egg white.

  6. Sprinkle with sugar.

  7. Bake for an additional 3 minutes.

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

Cranberries
Provide the tart flavour and, cooked with sugar, the thick fruit filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the cranberry filling as it cooks.
Puff pastry
Forms flaky, layered walls that rise and crisp in the oven.
Egg white
Brushed on the crust, it promotes browning and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool completely. Hot filling melts the butter in the puff pastry and makes the base soggy, so the layers cannot rise and crisp properly. Cooling first keeps the pastry structure intact in the oven.

“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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