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Dessert

Orange Tarts

A tart filled with a Seville orange peel and sugar syrup, baked to a golden finish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the peel

  1. Grate the zest of the Seville orange.

  2. Squeeze the juice into a dish.

  3. Soak the peel in water, changing it often for four days.

  4. Boil the peel in a saucepan of water, changing the water twice to remove bitterness.

  5. Once tender, wipe the peel.

  6. Mash the peel in a mortar.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the same weight of sugar in water to make a syrup.

  2. Skim the syrup.

  3. Add the mashed peel to the syrup and boil until clear.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the tarts with the mixture and add the orange juice.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Seville orange
Provides the bitter peel and juice that flavour the filling.
Double refined sugar
Sweetens the filling and, boiled into syrup, helps set it clear and thick.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky case that holds the filling while it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the pastry brown and taste savoury-sweet.

The step that matters

Boil the peel until clear, after changing the water. Repeated water changes draw out bitter compounds from the peel. Boiling the peel in sugar syrup until clear cooks it through so the filling is tender and sets evenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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