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Dessert

Treacle Tarts

A sweet pastry made with treacle, bread crumbs, spices, and lemon, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Treacle Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Line a pie plate with the pie crust.

  2. Spread the treacle evenly over the crust.

  3. Add enough bread crumbs to achieve a jam-like consistency.

  4. Mix in the ground ginger, nutmeg, or mixed spice, and lemon juice or peel.

Top and bake

  1. Optionally, cover with another layer of pie crust and crimp the edges, or decorate with cutouts.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the crust is browned.

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. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  2. Syrup + gingertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together950 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

  4. Syrup + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + gingertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Treacle (golden syrup)
Provides the sweet, rich body of the filling and sets as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the syrup and thicken the filling to a jam-like consistency.
Pie crust
Forms the base that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the bread crumbs. Crumbs must be added until the filling reaches a jam-like consistency. Too few leaves the treacle runny and it may spill or soak the crust; too many makes the filling dry and dense.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, bread, ginger):

  1. Pearfits about as well
  2. Apricotfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, bread, ginger. 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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