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Dessert

Meringue Tarts

Meringue tarts are pie crusts topped with meringue and decorated with sugar and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Meringue Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crusts

  1. Cut the pie crust into circles the size of a condensed milk can.

  2. Bake the crusts in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes.

Make the meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the sugar to the egg whites and mix lightly.

  3. Fill an ornamenting bag with the meringue.

  4. Pipe the meringue onto the baked crusts.

Dry and decorate

  1. Sprinkle the tops with pulverized sugar.

  2. Place the tarts in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) for 5 minutes to dry.

  3. Decorate the tarts with jelly.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the meringue its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the meringue and helps stabilize the whipped egg white foam.
Pie crust
Forms the base that holds the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped to full stiffness before sugar is added. Under-beaten whites collapse, and sugar added too early or with fat residue can prevent the foam from holding its volume.

“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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