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Dessert

Lemon Tarts

A tart filled with lemon jelly topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Tarts

makes 12 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.

Make the lemon filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the grated lemon rind and juice, sugar, egg yolk, and cold water.

  2. Stir in the cornstarch until well mixed.

  3. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it becomes a clear, straw-colored jelly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the baked paste shells with the lemon jelly.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg white until frothy, then gradually add the powdered sugar to make a meringue.

  3. Spread the meringue over the jelly in the tarts.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the meringue is delicately browned.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the lemon juice and water into a sliceable, jelly-like filling.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps enrich the lemon filling as it sets.
Egg white
Whipped into foam to form the meringue topping that holds its shape and browns.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.
Lemon rind and juice
Provides the tart, bright lemon flavour that balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the lemon jelly. Cornstarch must be cooked over heat until it thickens fully; undercooked starch stays runny and the filling will not set firm when cooled.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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