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Dessert

Sand Tarts

Sand tarts are shortbread cookies made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, cinnamon, baking powder, and coarse sugar topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Sift and cream in the brown sugar.

  3. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Sift in the flour, baking powder, and cinnamon, then mix until combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to 1 inch thick and cut with a cookie cutter.

  2. Sprinkle the mixture of 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1 cup coarse granulated sugar evenly over the cookies before baking.

  3. Bake in a quick oven at 400°F (200°C) until lightly golden.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

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
Creamed with the sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender, rich body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough together and add richness and structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cut cookies in shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cookies rise and turn light.
Coarse granulated sugar
Forms a crisp, sparkling sweet crust on the cookie tops as it bakes.

The step that matters

Sprinkling the cinnamon sugar before baking. The coarse sugar must be spread evenly over the cut cookies before they go in the oven, because once baked it cannot be added to the surface neatly. Even coverage gives a uniform crust and flavour across every cookie.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, 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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