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Dessert

Cream Tartlets

A tartlet filled with jam, custard, meringue, and cherry compote.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cases

  1. Make tartlet cases with puff or tart paste, keeping them open during baking with rounded dummies.

  2. Place jam in the tartlet cases, add 1 teaspoon of custard on top.

Bake and top with meringue

  1. Prepare meringue with icing sugar and egg whites.

  2. Bake the tartlets in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  3. Add the meringue to the baked tartlets.

  4. Return the tartlets to the oven for a few minutes to set the meringue.

Make the cherry topping

  1. Stone the cherries without disfiguring them.

  2. Coat the cherries with pulverized sugar in a stewpan and boil for 2–3 minutes.

  3. Strain the juice from the cherries.

  4. Return the juice to the stewpan, adding cochineal and lemon juice.

  5. Thicken the juice with a small amount of cornflour mixed with cold water.

  6. Pour the thickened juice over the cherries.

Fill and finish

  1. Once cooled, fill the tartlets with the cherry mixture.

  2. Pipe whipped cream around the edges of the tartlets.

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 + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

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

Eggs
Egg whites form the meringue, and yolks enrich the custard for structure and richness.
Cornflour
Starch thickens the cherry juice into a glossy sauce as it heats with liquid.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and meringue, and helps the meringue hold its structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard, which sets as the eggs cook.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cherry juice and helps stabilise the meringue.

The step that matters

Setting the meringue. Meringue must be returned to the oven briefly to set properly. Too long and it browns or weeps; too short and it stays soft and slides off the tartlet.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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