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Dessert

Orange Tart

A tart with a thickened orange juice and sugar filling baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Orange Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Make the orange filling

  1. Squeeze juice and pulp from the oranges.

  2. Add sugar, butter, and water to the orange mixture.

  3. Cook in a kettle until it thickens.

Bake the tart

  1. Bake a tart crust as usual.

  2. Fill the crust with the orange mixture.

  3. Bake the top and set in the oven for a few minutes until golden brown.

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. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Oranges
Provide the main flavour and the juice and pulp that form the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken as it cooks down.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the orange mixture until it thickens. Sugar and fruit need enough cooking to reduce and concentrate. Undercooked filling stays runny and may not set once it cools and is baked in the crust.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter. 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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