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Dessert

Green Peas Tart

A baked tart filled with boiled green peas, salt, sugar, butter, saffron, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and saffron work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 145 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Green Peas Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the green peas for a very short time.

  2. Add salt, grated sugar, butter, and saffron to the peas.

Bake and serve

  1. Enclose the mixture in puff pastry.

  2. Bake gently at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  3. Serve with additional sugar sprinkled on top.

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. Peas + saffrontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + saffrontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together581 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Young green peas
Provide the main filling, with a tender texture and sweet, fresh flavour.
Grated loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling brown lightly in the oven.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, savoury mouthfeel to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky shell that bakes golden around the filling.
Saffron
Adds a distinctive floral aroma and a golden colour to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake gently until golden. Baking at a moderate heat lets the puff pastry rise and turn flaky while the filling heats through. Too much heat can scorch the sugar and brown the pastry before the filling is hot.

Swap the saffron

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Mintfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, sugar, butter. 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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