Name: Prune Tartlets
Ingredients: 1 cup prune puree; ½ cup cream; ⅓ cup claret; ¼ cup sugar; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; 8 pastry cases; ½ cup whipped cream (for decoration); pistachios (for decoration)

Why it works: Lemon and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 431 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Prune Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the prune puree, cream, lemon juice, and sugar together.
Fill the pastry cases with this mixture.
Decorate with whipped cream and pistachios.

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.

Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together431 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together634 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + pistachiotop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,233 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Prune puree: Provides the main body, sweetness and deep fruity flavour of the filling.
Cream: Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, softer texture.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the sweet prune flavour.