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Lemon Tartlets

A tartlet made with lemon rinds, almonds, sugar, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lemon Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Pare the rinds of the lemons thickly and boil them tender in two waters.

  2. Beat the boiled rinds finely and add the sliced almonds, lump sugar, lemon juice, and grated peel.

  3. Simmer the mixture until it forms a syrup, then let it cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Line a shallow tart dish with the puff paste and pour in the cooled mixture.

  2. Lay bars of paste over the top and bake until the paste is golden brown.

  3. Serve immediately after baking.

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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

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

Lemons
Provide the juice and peel that give the filling its sharp, bright flavour.
Blanched almonds
Add body and a nutty texture to the filling as they cook into the syrup.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken into a syrup when simmered.
Rich thin puff paste
Forms the crisp, flaky case and top that bake to a golden brown.

The step that matters

Simmer the mixture until it forms a syrup. Simmering drives off water and concentrates the sugar so the filling sets into a thick syrup rather than staying runny, which would soak the pastry and make the tart soggy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, 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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