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Puff-paste Tartlets

A pastry tartlet made from puff pastry, topped with meringue paste and nuts, filled with fruit preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and pistachio are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,233 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Puff-paste Tartlets

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 shells

  1. Roll out the puff pastry to ⅙ inch thick.

  2. Cut out twenty circles, 1¾ inches in diameter.

  3. Use a smaller cutter to stamp out the center of each circle.

  4. Knead the trimmings.

  5. Roll out to ⅛ inch thick.

  6. Cut out circles to match the rings.

  7. Place the rings on a wet baking sheet.

  8. Moisten edges with water.

  9. Sprinkle sugar on top.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until lightly colored.

  2. Mask the rings with meringue paste.

  3. Dip in chopped pistachios or almonds.

  4. Fill the tartlets with prepared fruit or preserves 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. Sugar + pistachiotop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  3. Pistachio + curranttop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and currant barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Puff pastry
Its layers of fat and dough puff apart in the oven to form light, flaky walls.
Meringue paste
Coats the rings and bakes to a crisp, pale topping that adds sweetness and texture.
Sugar
Sprinkled on top, it caramelizes during baking, adding sweetness and light browning.
Pistachios or almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavor to the edges of the tartlets.

The step that matters

Bake until lightly colored. Puff pastry relies on steam from its butter layers to rise. Underbaking leaves the layers soggy and collapsed, while overbaking darkens the sugar and dries the shells.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, pistachio):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pistachio. 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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