Skip to main content
Dessert

Pecan Tart

A tart made with egg whites, sugar, pecans, lemon, cracker meal, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Egg and pecans are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,280 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Pecan Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

Make and bake the tart

  1. Gently fold in the granulated sugar, chopped pecans, lemon rind, lemon juice, cracker meal, and baking powder.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased tart pan or springform pan.

  3. Bake slowly in the preheated oven until set.

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. Egg + pecanstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,280 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Pecans + lemontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together399 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sugar and lemon 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they create the airy foam that gives the tart its light structure.
Cracker meal
Provides dry starch and crumb that help the mixture hold its shape as it sets.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the tart and helps stabilise the whipped egg white foam.
Chopped pecans
Add fat, texture and toasty, nutty flavour to the set tart.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the rich pecans.

The step that matters

Folding in the dry and sweet ingredients. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the egg whites. Stirring or deflating the foam too much leads to a dense, flat tart once baked.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Pistachiofits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes