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Dessert

Spinach Tart

A baked tart filled with sautéed spinach, butter, cream, and citrus flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spinach Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Scald the spinach, then drain and squeeze it dry.

  2. Chop the spinach and stew it in butter and cream.

  3. Add salt, sugar, citron, and orange-flower water; mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a tart pan with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the spinach mixture into the pastry and bake until golden.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Spinach + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  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

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the tart its green flavour and body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour as it stews with the spinach.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smooth, rich texture to the stewed filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury spinach and salt.
Citron
Adds a bright, slightly bitter citrus note to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky shell that holds the filling and turns golden in the oven.

The step that matters

Squeezing the spinach dry. Excess water left in spinach dilutes the cream and butter and can make the filling watery and the pastry soggy during baking. Thoroughly drained spinach keeps the filling thick.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, butter, cream, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, cream, 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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