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Dessert

Lemon Tarts

A tart made with a lemon sugar butter custard filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,149 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, grated lemon, and butter.

  2. Heat the mixture on the stove until it reaches a boiling point, but do not let it boil.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg whites.

Assemble

  1. Pour the mixture into tart shells.

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 + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

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

  2. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps thicken the lemon filling as it heats.
Grated lemon
Provides the bright, acidic lemon flavour and aroma.
Egg whites
Beaten egg whites add structure and lightness to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Heating without boiling. Egg whites can curdle or scramble if the mixture gets too hot, so heat it only to the point just before boiling and remove it from the heat promptly before stirring in the egg whites.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Milletfits about as well

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