Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Cherry Tartlets
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
Remove the stalks from the cherries and place them in a small saucepan with the moist sugar.
Place the saucepan in a larger one filled with boiling water and cook until the cherries are tender.
Meanwhile, line 10 to 12 deep tartlet pans with the pastry and fill them with rice, placing a buttered paper between the rice and the pastry.
Bake the lined pans in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.
Make the custard and assemble
Once the cherries are cooked, strain the syrup into a small saucepan, add the beaten egg yolks, and stir over low heat until the custard thickens.
Fill the tartlet cases with cherries, cover with custard, and sprinkle with caster sugar.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Short crust pastry
- Forms the crisp case that holds the cherries and custard.
- Cooking cherries
- Provide the fruit filling, softened by gentle cooking in their own syrup.
- Moist sugar
- Sweetens the cherries and helps form the syrup.
- Eggs
- Egg yolks thicken the syrup into a custard as they set over low heat.
The step that matters
Thickening the custard over low heat. Egg yolks set at gentle temperatures; high heat can scramble them into lumps. Stirring over low heat keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.
“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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