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Dessert

Chocolate Tartar

A chocolate tart with orange peel, lemon peel, citron, nuts, and a tart jelly filling, topped with chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Chocolate Tartar

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg yolks well and add the sugar. Beat again.

  3. Mix in the melted chocolate, allspice, vanilla, and water.

  4. Add the chopped orange peel, lemon peel, citron, and nuts.

  5. Sift the flour with baking powder and fold it into the mixture.

  6. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and assemble

  1. Divide the batter into two layers and bake until done.

  2. Spread tart jelly between the layers.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, mix chocolate and sugar, then slowly add boiling water until smooth.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Allspice + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Vanilla + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the batter, giving a tender, custard-like crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they trap air that helps the batter rise and stay light.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the layers rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps keep the crumb moist and tender.
Chocolate
Adds deep flavor and richness to the batter and the icing.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped whites intact. Stirring or beating them down would deflate the batter and leave the layers dense instead of light.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, chocolate, allspice, vanilla, orange, lemon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, chocolate, allspice, vanilla, orange, 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.

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