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Dessert

Orange Tart

A fruit preserve made from oranges, lemon, sugar, water, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Tart

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Squeeze the juice and pulp of the oranges into a bowl.

  2. Add the juice of the lemon, sugar, and cold water; bring to a boil and strain.

  3. Dissolve corn-starch in a little cold water, rub smooth, and add to the strained juices.

  4. Boil for 15 minutes to cook the corn-starch; then set aside.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Orange + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together586 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Oranges
Provide the main flavour and most of the liquid base of the filling.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and sharpens the orange flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the citrus juice.
Corn-starch
Thickens the juice into a set filling when it is fully boiled.

The step that matters

Boil the corn-starch for the full 15 minutes. Starch granules only swell and thicken the liquid once they reach a full boil. Boiling long enough cooks out the raw starch taste and gives a smooth, stable set. Stopping early leaves the filling thin or starchy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against orange, sugar, corn. 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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