Why it works: Egg and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 44,316 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓
To Make Pate Shells From Puff Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the shells
Roll the puff paste to ¼ inch thickness.
Cut into rounds with a fluted or plain cutter.
Use one round for the base and cut a hole in the center of two others.
Moisten the edges of each circle with a little water.
Place the two rings with holes on top of the whole round, pressing the edges lightly together.
Glaze the top with an egg, avoiding the edges.
Bake and fill
Use the small cut pieces for covers after filling the cases.
Bake in a separate pan until golden brown.
Fill the tart shells with jelly, jam, preserves, or lemon cream after cooling.
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.
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Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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
- Puff paste
- Its laminated layers of fat and dough puff into flaky, airy structure when baked.
- Egg
- Glazing the top gives the pastry a shiny, golden-brown finish as it bakes.
The step that matters
Glaze the top with an egg, avoiding the edges.. Egg glaze browns quickly and can seal the layers together if it runs down the cut edges, which stops the pastry from rising evenly and puffing properly.
“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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