Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cherry Tartlets
Ingredients
Directions
The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.
Prepare the filling
Remove the stalks from the cherries and place them in a small saucepan with the moist sugar.
Stand the saucepan in a larger one filled with boiling water and cook until the cherries are tender.
Make the pastry and custard
Meanwhile, line 10 to 12 patty pans with the short pastry and fill them with rice, placing a buttered paper between the rice and the pastry.
Bake the pastry in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.
Once the cherries are cooked, strain the syrup into a small saucepan, add the beaten egg yolks, and stir over low heat until the custard thickens.
Assemble and bake
Fill the baked pastry cases with cherries, cover with custard, and top with stiffly whipped egg whites.
Sprinkle with castor sugar and return to the oven until the egg whites harden and color slightly.
Serve hot or cold.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Short pastry
- Forms the crisp, sturdy case that holds the filling.
- Cooking cherries
- Provide the fruit flavor and the main filling of the tartlets.
- Moist sugar
- Sweetens the cherries and helps draw out their syrup as they cook.
- Eggs
- Yolks thicken the custard, and whipped whites form the light topping that sets and browns.
The step that matters
Cooking the custard over low heat. Egg yolks scramble if heated too fast. Gentle, steady heat lets the proteins thicken the syrup smoothly into a custard instead of curdling it.
“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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