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Dessert

Lemon or Orange Tarts

A tart filled with a paste of lemon or orange rind, sugar, and butter, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemon or Orange Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the rind

  1. Remove the yellow rind from the lemons or oranges.

  2. Simmer until the water is evaporated and the rind is almost a paste.

  3. Carefully remove all white pulp and kernels from the rind.

  4. Combine the remaining rind with the sugar.

Make the filling

  1. Mix over heat until well blended and paste-like.

  2. Add the butter and mix again until incorporated.

  3. Optionally, add grated ginger to the filling.

Assemble and serve

  1. Line tart tins with the puff pastry.

  2. Fill the tins with the lemon or orange paste.

  3. Cover with more pastry.

  4. Ice the covers before serving.

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 + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Lemons or seville oranges
Supply the main flavour, acidity and the rind that forms the filling.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it cooks, thickens the rind into a spreadable paste.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, softer texture to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp case and cover that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Mix over heat until paste-like. Cooking drives off water so the sugar and rind thicken into a paste. Too little cooking leaves a runny filling that soaks the pastry, while too much heat can scorch the sugar and make it bitter.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, 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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