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Dessert

Pumpkin Tart

A puff pastry tart filled with a sweet pumpkin mixture and topped with whipped cream and pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Pumpkin Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pastry

  1. Make a puff pastry with the flour and line a shallow tin pan with it.

  2. Grease the pan well and prick the pastry to prevent blistering.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden, then turn out of the pan.

Make the filling

  1. Boil 1 pound of ripe yellow pumpkin until soft, then pass through a sieve.

  2. Add ½ cup sugar, grated lemon rind, lemon juice, orange juice, and cloves.

  3. Boil until the mixture is clear, then remove the cloves.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill the pastry case with the pumpkin mixture.

  2. Cover with whipped cream and sprinkle with chopped pistachio 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Orange + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Flour + pistachiotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pumpkin (in the method)
Forms the bulk of the filling and sets into a soft, smooth custard-like texture when boiled and sieved.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the filling as the mixture is boiled.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from the rind and juice, balancing the sweetness of the filling.
Coombs' eureka flour
Forms the structure of the puff pastry case that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Boil the pumpkin mixture until clear. Boiling the sweetened pumpkin purée drives off excess water and thickens it. Stopping too early leaves a runny filling that soaks the pastry, while overcooking can make it stiff.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, lemon, orange, clove, cream, pistachio):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Cashew nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, lemon, orange, clove, cream, pistachio. 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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