Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Cream Tarts
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the shells
Make a rich, brittle crust and cover your patty pans, smoothing off the edges nicely.
Bake well.
Make the filling
While the shells are cooling, whip the cream in a large bowl with an egg beater until thick and stiff.
Add the sugar and lemon or vanilla extract to the whipped cream and mix well.
Fill and serve
Fill the cooled tart shells with the cream mixture and set in a cool place until ready to serve.
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.
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Cream + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together29,399 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
- Fresh cream
- Whipping traps air in the fat and protein network, giving the filling a thick, stiff, light body.
- Fine white sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the whipped cream while it sits.
The step that matters
Whip the cream until thick and stiff. Cream under-whipped stays runny and will not hold its shape in the shells, while over-whipping can turn it grainy and cause it to separate, since the fat globules clump together.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Strawberryfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, 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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