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Orange Cream Tartlets

A tartlet filled with orange-flavored custard and topped with pistachio nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Cream Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cases

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line patty tins with short or flaky pastry and prick the bottoms. Bake until crisp and set aside to cool.

Make and fill the tartlets

  1. Grate the sugar on the orange rind and place it in a pan with the orange and lemon juice. Allow to dissolve slowly.

  2. Add the egg yolks and stir until thick, but do not boil.

  3. Whisk the egg white until very stiff and fold it into the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into the pastry cases and decorate with pistachio nuts.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

  4. Orange + pistachiotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they gently set with heat, giving a creamy body.
Egg white
Whisked into stiff foam, it adds air and a light texture to the filling.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the filling and dissolves into the juice to form a syrup.
Orange
Rind and juice add fragrant aroma and fresh citrus flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the richness.
Short or flaky pastry
Bakes into a crisp case that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks until thick without boiling. Egg yolk proteins thicken the custard as they set gently under heat. If the mixture boils, the proteins tighten too far and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth filling.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, orange, lemon, pistachio. 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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