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Dessert

Sand Tarts

Sand Tarts are sweet pastries made with butter, flour, sugar, eggs, nuts, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sand Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the sugar and mix thoroughly.

  3. Wet the mixture with the egg whites and yolks, and combine until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough very thin and cut it into diamond shapes.

  2. Glaze the tops with the egg white.

  3. Sprinkle with chopped nuts and ground cinnamon before baking.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nuts + cinnamontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together487 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Coats the flour and adds richness and tenderness to the dough.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together once baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Egg yolks
Add fat and richness, helping bind the dough smooth.
Egg whites
Moisten the dough and help bind it, and the glaze gives the tops a sheen.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes through into a crisp, delicate cookie. Thick dough stays soft and cakey in the middle and may not brown evenly.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, egg, cinnamon. 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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