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Dessert

Lemon Tarts

A buttery pastry shell filled with a lemon custard made from butter, sugar, eggs, lemon zest, juice, nutmeg, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, lemon rind, lemon juice, nutmeg, and brandy.

  3. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Line patty pans with puff pastry.

  2. Fill the pastry with the lemon mixture.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until set and serve cold.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender, creamy body to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps cream the butter to a light texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the filling as it bakes, giving a smooth custard texture.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they add lightness and help the filling puff and set.
Lemon juice
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the tart its characteristic flavour.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, crisp shell that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites that are under-beaten won't hold air, and over-mixing deflates them. Gentle folding keeps the filling light so it sets without becoming dense or weeping.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, brandy. 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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