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Dessert

Chocolate Tart

A chocolate tart made with crumbled crackers, cocoa, pecans, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cocoa powder and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,920 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Chocolate Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Crumb the crackers finely until you have 1 cup.

  2. Add baking powder to the crumbled crackers and sift into the well-beaten sugar and egg yolks.

  3. Stir in cocoa powder and chopped pecans, then moisten the mixture with milk.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and bake until done.

Top and serve

  1. Prepare a meringue by beating the egg whites with sugar until stiff peaks form.

  2. Spread the meringue over the tart and brown lightly in the oven.

  3. Serve with a white liquid sauce.

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. Cocoa powder + sugartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pecans + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Pecans + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,280 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Crackers
Crumbs form the body of the base and help bind the mixture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the mixture so it rises and lightens as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the base together.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light meringue topping.
Cocoa powder
Provides chocolate flavor and a dark color to the base.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps stabilize the whipped meringue.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be beaten until they hold stiff peaks so the meringue traps air and stays light. Underbeaten whites collapse and weep, while overbeaten whites turn grainy and dry, so the meringue browns unevenly.

Swap the pecans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cocoa powder, milk, sugar, egg):

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cocoa powder, milk, sugar, egg. 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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