Skip to main content
Dessert

Spinach Tarts

Spinach tarts are pastry filled with sautéed spinach, butter, cream, sugar, citron, and orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Scald the spinach in boiling water and drain it very dry.

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

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

Bake

  1. Place the mixture in fine puff pastry.

  2. Bake 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.

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, once drained and chopped, gives the tart its body.
Butter
Enriches the spinach and carries flavour while it stews.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the filling stay soft and cohesive.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the savoury spinach and the citron.
Citron
Adds a bright, slightly bitter citrus note to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky case that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Drain the spinach very dry. Excess water left in the spinach dilutes the cream and butter, so the filling turns loose and soggy and can make the pastry base wet during baking. Squeezing the leaves dry keeps the filling thick and the pastry crisp.

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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipesOrange SherbetOrange Sherbet73 recipes