Skip to main content
Dessert

Lemon Tart

A lemon custard tart with a buttery crust and biscuit‑filled filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Lemon Tart

Why it works: Biscuit and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 889 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Lemon Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crust

  1. Make a short crust with flour, salt, butter, lemon juice, and cold water.

  2. Roll out the pastry and cut strips to cover the edge of a greased tartlet tin.

  3. Cover the tin with the pastry, decorate the edges, prick the center, and bake until half‑cooked.

Make the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter and sugar until creamy.

  3. Add the well‑beaten eggs, grated lemon rind, lemon juice, and crushed Savoy biscuits.

Bake and set

  1. Pour the lemon mixture into the pastry case and return to the oven until set and browned.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Biscuit + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Set the filling into a custard as they cook, adding structure.
Butter
Beaten with sugar to a creamy base and adds richness to the pastry and filling.
Castor sugar
Beaten with butter to create a creamy texture and sweetness.
Lemon juice
Provides sharp acidity that gives the filling its citrus flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the short crust pastry.
Savoy biscuits
Crushed into the filling, adding body and a biscuity texture.

The step that matters

Bake the pastry until half-cooked before adding the filling. Partly baking the pastry case first helps it stay crisp so it does not turn soggy under the wet lemon filling. Pricking the base lets steam escape so it does not puff up.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, butter, biscuit, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, biscuit, flour. 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.

More lemon tart recipes

Filling 4 See all 31 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesBaking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes