Skip to main content
Dessert

Granville Tartlets

A sweet tartlet made with currants, candied peel, cake crumbs, and coconut, baked and iced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Granville Tartlets

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.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until thick and smooth.

  2. Add the currants, ground rice, candied peel, cake crumbs, cream, and lemon essence.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Line eighteen small oval tartlet molds with short pastry.

  2. Fill the molds with the mixture and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15-20 minutes.

  3. Once cool, mask the tartlets with icing and sprinkle with desiccated coconut.

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. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the mixture and help it rise and set structure while baking.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the filling a tender, rich texture.
Castor sugar
Creamed with butter to aid aeration and add sweetness to the filling.
Cake crumbs
Add body and moisture to the filling, giving a soft, tender crumb.
Ground rice
Adds a fine, slightly firm texture that helps the filling hold its shape.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.. Overmixing knocks the air out of the whipped whites, so the filling bakes flatter and denser. Folding gently keeps the foam intact for a light, risen texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, rice, coconut, egg, cream, lemon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, rice, coconut, egg, cream, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesRice CakeRice Cake120 recipes