Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Orange Tart
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the orange
Grate the zest of the Seville orange and squeeze the juice into a dish.
Soak the orange peel in water for four days, changing the water often.
Boil the peel in fresh water until tender, then wipe and beat it in a mortar.
Boil the beaten peel with double-refined sugar to make a syrup.
Add the pulp of the orange to the syrup and mix well.
Bake and fill
Line a tart pan with puff pastry and fill it with the orange mixture.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).
For a raspberry tart, fill the pastry with raspberries, sprinkle sugar on top, cover with a lid, and bake.
After baking, cut open the tart and fill it with ½ pint of cream, beaten egg yolks, and a little sugar.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together19,212 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together42,166 recipes
Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
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Orange + creamtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,170 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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
- Seville orange
- Provides the bitter, aromatic peel and the tart juice and pulp that flavour the filling.
- Double-refined sugar
- Sweetens the syrup and helps preserve the beaten peel.
- Puff pastry
- Forms the crisp, flaky case that holds the orange filling.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the filling and help it set to a creamy texture.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a soft, smooth texture to the filling.
The step that matters
Boil the peel until tender. Thick orange peel stays tough and bitter if not simmered fully in fresh water, and the soaking and changing of water removes bitterness. Beating it fully then gives a smooth syrup base for the filling.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Strawberryfits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, egg. 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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