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Dessert

Lemon Tartlets

A pastry shell filled with a lemon custard and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Tartlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour mixed with a little cold milk and heat again, stirring constantly.

  3. Pour the mixture over the beaten yolks and sugar; cook for 1 minute.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the lemon juice and grated rind.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare baked puff pastry shells in tart pans.

  2. Fill the shells with the lemon mixture.

  3. Top each tartlet with meringue made from whipped egg whites and a little powdered sugar.

  4. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until the meringue is set and lightly colored.

  5. Serve fresh, but not hot.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the lemon custard, and whites whip into the meringue topping.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk mixture so the filling becomes smooth and sliceable.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the meringue.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, providing moisture and body.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma that balance the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the custard after adding the yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if they get too hot too fast. Cooking gently while stirring keeps the filling smooth, and the mixture must be kept moving so the starch and yolks set evenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, milk, flour):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, milk, flour. 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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