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Dessert

Sand Tarts

A sweet pastry made with butter, vinegar, flour, egg, and topped with sugar, cinnamon, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sand Tarts

Ingredients

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and shape the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine butter, vinegar, and flour to form a stiff dough.

  2. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

Top and bake

  1. Brush the tops with the beaten egg.

  2. Sprinkle sugar, cinnamon, and nuts on top.

  3. 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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together487 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that keeps the dough short and tender rather than tough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff dough and its shapes.
Egg
Brushed on top to give a glossy sheen and help the surface brown.
Sugar
Sprinkled on top, it sweetens and caramelizes to add browning and crunch.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Golden color is the only cue for doneness here. Sugar browns quickly through caramelization and the Maillard reaction, so pulling the tarts once they are golden keeps them from drying out and turning bitter.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, vinegar, flour, egg, sugar, cinnamon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Cashew nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar, flour, egg, sugar, cinnamon. 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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