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Dessert

Lemon Tarts

A tart filled with lemon‑flavored jelly and frosted with browned egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,927 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix the lemon juice, grated rind, egg yolk, and sugar together.

  2. Stir the corn starch into the cold water until dissolved.

  3. Combine the mixtures in a saucepan and heat until it becomes a clear jelly.

Fill and finish

  1. Fill the pre-baked tart shells with the jelly.

  2. Frost with the egg white and lightly brown in the oven.

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 + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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

Lemon
Provides acidity and fresh aroma that balance the sweetness of the filling.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and body to the filling.
Corn starch
Thickens the lemon mixture into a clear, sliceable jelly when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and offsets the tartness of the lemon.
Egg white
Forms a light topping that sets and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Heat the filling until it turns clear. Cornstarch thickens only when its granules are heated enough to swell and set, so the jelly must be fully thickened before filling. Heating too long or too hard can thin the starch again, so remove it once it is clear and thick.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, corn. 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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