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Dessert

Sand Tarts

A sweet pastry made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, cinnamon, topped with almonds or raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sand Tarts

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 dough

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Beat in the eggs, reserving 1 egg white.

  4. Gradually add the flour and mix until smooth.

  5. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into square shapes.

Top and bake

  1. Brush the tops with the reserved egg white.

  2. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.

  3. Press a blanched almond or a raisin into the center of each square.

  4. Bake until lightly golden.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure; the reserved white gives a glossy brushed top.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed in.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough thinly. Thin dough bakes through and crisps evenly. Thick dough stays soft in the center and spreads less cleanly, so the shapes lose their definition.

“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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