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Spinach Tart

A baked tart with spinach, puff pastry, cheese, eggs, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 352 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Spinach Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick the spinach off the stalks and wash it in plenty of water.

  2. Plunge the spinach into boiling water for 5 minutes, then drain and finely chop it.

Assemble the tart

  1. Butter a deep circular baking dish and line it with puff pastry.

  2. Brush the pastry with warmed butter and lay the chopped spinach on top.

  3. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the grated cheese and pour the mixture over the spinach.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until nicely browned.

  2. Cut the pastry into quarters and serve.

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. Spinach + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the cheese custard and bind the filling as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the pastry brown and crisp.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp base that holds the filling.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and, with the eggs, helps the filling set.
Spinach
Provides the main green filling and its earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Plunge the spinach into boiling water. Blanching for a short time wilts the spinach and brightens its colour. Draining and chopping it well removes excess water, which would otherwise make the filling soggy and stop the tart from setting properly.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, cheese, almond, sugar):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, cheese, almond, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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