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Dessert

Granville Tartlets

A sweet tartlet made with butter, sugar, currants, ground rice, candied peel, cake crumbs, coconut, egg whites, cream, and lemon essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,063 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Granville Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until thick and smooth.

  2. Add the currants, ground rice, candied peel, cake crumbs, cream, and lemon essence.

  3. Fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.

Bake and finish

  1. Line eighteen small oval tartlet molds with short paste.

  2. Fill the molds with the mixture and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15-20 minutes.

  3. Once cool, mask the tartlets with icing and sprinkle with desiccated coconut.

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. Rice + coconuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,063 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

  4. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the mixture and help it rise and set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb to the filling.
Castor sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the filling and helps create a smooth, airy base.
Cake crumbs
Add body and moisture to the filling, giving the tartlets a soft, dense texture.
Ground rice
Adds a slightly grainy texture and helps the filling hold its structure as it bakes.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Stiffly whipped whites trap air that gives lift. Overmixing deflates them, leaving the tartlets dense and flat after baking.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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