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Dessert

Chocolate Tart

A chocolate tart with cinnamon, lemon zest, and puff pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chocolate 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.

Make the chocolate custard

  1. Melt the chocolate with the cinnamon in a saucepan.

  2. Add grated lemon peel, salt, and sugar to the mixture.

  3. In a bowl, mix flour with the beaten egg yolks and enough milk to create a smooth mixture.

  4. Combine the flour mixture with the chocolate mixture.

  5. Heat gently until slightly thickened.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in small pieces of lemon peel.

  7. Let the mixture cool.

  8. Whip the egg whites until stiff. Fold the stiff egg whites into the cooled chocolate mixture.

Bake and finish

  1. Line a tart pan with puff pastry.

  2. Pour the chocolate mixture into the lined pan.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

  4. Sift sugar over the top and glaze with a salamander.

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 + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Chocolate + cinnamontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Chocolate
Provides the rich body and main flavour of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they gently set with heat, giving a rich custard texture.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the filling and add air for a softer set.
All-purpose flour
Helps stabilise the mixture and adds body to the custard.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky shell that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Heat gently until slightly thickened. Egg yolks can curdle and turn grainy if overheated, so heat slowly and stop once the custard thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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