Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Tarts and Puffs
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Butter the bottoms of tin patties and place a thin layer of crust inside.
Add fine sugar at the bottom, then layer in your fruit, and sprinkle more sugar on top.
For apples and pears, cut them into quarters, remove the cores, and slice them. Simmer in a saucepan with just enough water to cover until tender, adding lemon peel.
Prepare your patties by adding fine sugar at the bottom, then the cooked fruit, and a little sugar on top.
Pour 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and 3 teaspoons of the cooking liquid over each tart, cover with the lid, and bake in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C).
For apricot tarts, omit the lemon juice.
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 + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,270 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together12,256 recipes
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
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):
- Orangefits better
- Limefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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