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Chocolate Meringue Tarts

Chocolate tarts filled with a chocolate custard and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Chocolate Meringue Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine milk, chocolate, and butter in a saucepan. Heat until boiling.

  2. Stir in cornstarch and cook for 5 minutes until thickened. Remove from heat.

  3. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs with sugar until well combined.

  4. When the chocolate mixture is almost cool, mix it with the egg mixture and vanilla.

Bake the tarts

  1. Pour the mixture into pastry shells and bake until set.

Top and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites with sugar and lemon juice until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the tarts and bake until lightly browned.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and, once melted and set, the body of the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture as it cooks, giving the filling its set texture.
Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the filling, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the tarts and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel in the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps stabilise the whipped egg whites for the meringue.

The step that matters

Mixing the chocolate mixture into the eggs. If the hot chocolate mixture is added to the eggs before it has cooled, the eggs can scramble instead of blending smoothly, so the step should wait until the mixture is almost cool.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, butter, chocolate, egg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, butter, chocolate, egg. 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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