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Vienna Tarts

Vienna Tarts are layered pastry cakes with lemon, cinnamon, marmalade, cranberry jelly, chocolate icing, and preserved fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and cranberry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 116 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Vienna 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.

Make the layers

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, beaten eggs, butter, lemon zest, cinnamon, and sugar until well combined.

  3. Divide the batter into three equal portions and spread each on parchment paper to form three round layers.

  4. Bake the layers until golden and set, then let them cool.

Assemble and finish

  1. Spread marmalade on the first layer, place the second layer on top, and spread cranberry jelly on it.

  2. Top with the third layer, then ice the entire tart with chocolate icing.

  3. Decorate with preserved fruit before serving.

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. Cinnamon + cranberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cranberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together210 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set the layers into a firm, sliceable structure as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the layers while contributing fat for a soft crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as the layers bake.
Marmalade
Adds sweetness and a bright, bitter-citrus tang between the layers.
Cranberry jelly
Adds sweet-tart fruitiness and moisture to the filling between the layers.

The step that matters

Baking the layers until golden and set. Thin layers bake quickly, so underbaking leaves them soft and unable to hold the fillings, while overbaking dries them out and makes them brittle. Watching for a golden color and a set center gives the structure needed for stacking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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