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Dessert

Lemon Tartlets

A tartlet filled with lemon custard and topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Tartlets

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. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour mixed with a little cold milk and heat again, stirring constantly.

  3. Pour the mixture over the beaten yolks and sugar, and cook for 1 minute.

  4. Remove from heat and beat in the lemon juice and grated rind.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare baked puff pastry shells in tart pans.

  2. Fill the shells with the lemon mixture.

  3. Make a meringue by whipping the egg whites and adding a little powdered sugar.

  4. Cover each tartlet with meringue and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until set and lightly colored.

Serve

  1. Serve fresh, but not hot.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites whip into the meringue topping.
Flour
Starch thickens the milk mixture so the filling holds its shape when cooled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the meringue.
Lemon
Provides acidity and aroma from the juice and grated peel.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling after adding the flour. The starch must be stirred constantly while heating so it thickens smoothly without lumps or scorching. Adding the hot mixture to the yolks gently and then cooking briefly keeps the eggs from curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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