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Dessert

Sand Tarts

A buttery pastry tart with almond and cinnamon sugar topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sand 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 dough

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour and beaten egg whites alternately.

  4. If the dough is not stiff enough to roll out, add a little more flour until it can be rolled very thin.

Shape and top

  1. Cut the dough into fancy shapes.

  2. Place the cutouts on a baking pan.

  3. Brush the tops with egg white.

  4. Top each with 2 or 3 pieces of blanched almonds.

  5. Sprinkle with a mixture of ¾ cup granulated sugar and ¼ cup ground cinnamon.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until lightly golden.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  3. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the dough richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the dough and whites add structure and help bind it.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough so it can be rolled and cut into shapes.
Blanched almonds
Add nutty flavour and a crisp, toasted topping on the tartlets.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the tops brown when baked.

The step that matters

Adding more flour to the dough. Too little flour leaves the dough sticky and hard to roll thin, while too much makes the tartlets tough and dry. Adding flour gradually and checking the stiffness keeps the texture right.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, flour, almond, cinnamon. 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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