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Cheese Tartlets

Cheese tartlets are small pastries filled with a mixture of white sauce, Parmesan cheese, eggs, cayenne, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parmesan cheese and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,368 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Cheese Tartlets

serves 14 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line fourteen patty pans with rough puff pastry.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the egg yolks, grated cheese, cayenne, and salt with the white sauce.

  2. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the pastry with the cheese mixture.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes without banging the oven door.

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. Parmesan cheese + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Sauce + parmesan cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  3. Sauce + eggtop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Sauce and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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

White sauce
Provides a smooth, creamy base that holds the filling together.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and helps the filling set as it bakes.
Eggs
Egg whites lift the mixture and the yolks help it set into a custard-like texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites trap air that gives the filling lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the foam and leaves the tartlets dense.

“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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