Skip to main content
Dessert

Orange Tart

A tart filled with orange juice, grated peel, sugar, butter, lemon juice, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Orange Tart

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 filling

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

  2. Beat together the juice of 2 oranges, grated peel of 1 orange, sugar, and butter in a bowl.

  3. Dissolve the cornstarch in the juice of 1 lemon and add it to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the filling into tart shells and bake until set.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavor and liquid that forms the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the sharp citrus acidity.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the citrus liquid so the filling sets when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the orange flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolve the cornstarch fully before adding it. Cornstarch clumps if it is added undissolved. Dissolving it in cold liquid first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the filling thickens smoothly when heated instead of becoming lumpy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, 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.

More orange tart recipes

Lemon 4Seville 3 See all 25 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes