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Dessert

Cream Strawberry Tarts

A tart of layered strawberries topped with a boiled cream mixture, served chilled and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Strawberry Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the tart

  1. Carefully pick over the strawberries and arrange them in layers in a deep pie tin lined with puff pastry, sprinkling sugar thickly between each layer. Fill the pie tin with strawberries and pour in some of the juice.

  2. Cover with a thick crust, making a slit in the top, and bake at 400°F (200°C).

Make the cream

  1. While the pie is baking, heat the cream until it boils.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg whites, white sugar, and cornstarch mixed with cold milk.

  3. Boil the mixture for a few moments until smooth, then set aside to cool.

Finish and serve

  1. Once the pie is baked, pour the cream mixture into the pie through the slit in the crust.

  2. Serve cold with powdered sugar sifted over the top.

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

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

  2. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Fresh strawberries
Provide the main fruit filling, with juice that moistens the tart.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and draws out their juice.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that holds the filling and cream.
Cream
Gives the custard its rich, fatty body and smooth texture.
Egg whites
Help thicken and set the cream mixture when heated.
Cornstarch
Thickens the cream mixture as it boils, giving it a smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Boiling the cream mixture. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil and is held there briefly; stopping early leaves it runny. Egg whites also need gentle heating to set rather than curdle into lumps.

“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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