Name: Prune Tarts
Ingredients: ½ lb prunes; 1 tablespoon cranberry juice; sugar to taste; short crust pastry

Why it works: Cranberry and sugar work together. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Prune Tarts

Ingredients

½ lb prunes
1 tablespoon cranberry juice
sugar to taste
short crust pastry

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Remove the pits from the prunes and chop them finely.
In a bowl, mix the chopped prunes with cranberry juice and sugar to taste.

Assemble and bake

Roll out the short crust pastry and cut into circles.
Place a spoonful of the prune mixture in the center of each pastry circle.
Fold the pastry over and seal the edges.
Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Cranberry + sugartop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together374 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

Prunes: Provide the main filling, supplying sweetness and a soft, jammy texture when cooked.
Short crust pastry: Forms the crisp, golden shell that encloses the filling.
Cranberry juice: Adds moisture and fruity acidity to loosen the chopped prune filling.

“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.