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Dessert

Tartlets with Cherries

A pastry tartlet filled with cherries and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Tartlets with Cherries

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 cases

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line tartlet tins with puff pastry.

  3. Cut the pastry to size.

  4. Pinch the edges of the pastry higher than the rim of the tin.

Make the dough

  1. Prepare dough by boiling lard in water.

  2. Mix flour into a stiff paste with the boiling water.

  3. Mold the paste into small portions.

  4. Shape the portions into points.

  5. Bake the dough until firm.

  6. Remove the dough from the tartlets.

Fill and serve

  1. Stone the cherries by removing the stones and stalks.

  2. Fill each tartlet with cherries.

  3. Sprinkle the tartlets with powdered sugar.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp shell that holds the filling.
Lard
Adds fat and richness, tenderising the dough as it is boiled in water.
Flour
Forms the stiff paste that sets into a firm structure when baked.
Cherries
Provide the fruity, slightly tart filling and moisture.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a light finish on top of the tartlets.

The step that matters

Boiling lard in water for the dough. The lard must fully melt into boiling water before the flour is added, so the paste mixes evenly. If the water is not hot enough, the dough becomes lumpy and does not shape or set well.

“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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