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Dessert

Cherry Tartlets

A pastry tartlet filled with cherries and custard, topped with whipped egg white and sprinkled with caster sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cherry Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove the stalks from the cherries.

  2. Place the cherries in a small saucepan with the moist sugar. Stand the saucepan in a larger one filled with boiling water. Cook until the cherries are tender.

Bake the cases

  1. Line 10 to 12 tartlet pans with the pastry. Fill the lined pans with rice. Place a buttered paper between the rice and the pastry.

  2. Bake the lined pans in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Make the custard and assemble

  1. Strain the syrup into a small saucepan. Add the beaten egg yolks to the saucepan. Stir over low heat until the custard thickens.

  2. Fill the tartlet cases with cherries. Cover the cherries with a layer of custard.

  3. Spread a little stiffly whipped egg white on top. Sprinkle with caster sugar.

  4. Return the tartlets to the oven until the egg white hardens and colors slightly.

  5. Serve hot or cold.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Short pastry
Forms the crisp, sturdy case that holds the cherries and custard.
Cooking cherries
Provide the fruit filling, softened by gentle cooking in their own syrup.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard by setting, and whites form a light topping that browns.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the cherries and helps draw out syrup while they cook.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over low heat. Egg yolks set at modest temperatures. Gentle, constant stirring thickens the custard smoothly, while high heat can scramble the yolks into lumps.

“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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