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Dessert

Orange Tarts

A pastry tart filled with orange marmalade and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Orange Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tart cases

  1. Line gem pans with good pastry.

  2. Bake until golden.

Fill and top

  1. Fill the baked pastry with a spoonful of orange marmalade or conserve.

  2. Make meringue by beating the egg whites and gradually adding powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue over the filled tarts.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the meringue is light 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. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Orange + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Whites of eggs
Whipped into foam to form the meringue topping that sets and holds its shape when baked.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves into the beaten whites to sweeten and stabilise the meringue.
Orange marmalade or conserve
Adds sweetness and bright citrus acidity that contrasts with the meringue.
Good pastry
Forms the crisp base that holds the filling and meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the meringue and adding the sugar gradually. Whites beaten with sugar added slowly form a stable foam that holds its volume. Adding sugar too fast or leaving any fat or yolk in the whites can prevent the foam from stiffening, so the meringue may weep or collapse in the oven.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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