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Dessert

Vienna Tarts

Vienna tarts are sweet pastries made from a batter of sugar, flour, eggs, butter, topped with jam, whipped cream, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Vienna Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the sugar, flour, and eggs in a bowl.

  2. Melt the butter and add it last to the mixture.

  3. Beat the mixture well for at least 10 minutes.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased tin and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until brown.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once baked, cut into strips measuring 2x4 inches.

  2. Spread jam on each strip and stack them together.

  3. Top with whipped cream and sprinkle with chopped nuts.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide structure and lift as they are beaten into the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the baked layers together.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown as it bakes.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruit flavor between the layers and moisture.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well for at least 10 minutes. Beating incorporates air into the eggs and batter, which gives the baked layers their lift and an even, tender crumb. Under-beating leaves a dense result.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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