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Dessert

Puff-paste Tartlets

A pastry tartlet made from puff pastry, meringue, nuts, and fruit or preserves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and plum work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Puff-paste Tartlets

20 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 pastry

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

  2. Use a circular cutter to stamp out 20 circles, each 1¾ inches in diameter.

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

  4. Knead the trimmings, roll out to ⅛ inch thick, and stamp out additional circles.

Bake and finish

  1. Place the circles on a wet baking sheet and moisten the edges with water.

  2. Attach the rings of pastry to the circles, sprinkle with sugar, and bake at 350°F (175°C) until lightly colored.

  3. Once baked, mask the rings with meringue paste and dip in chopped pistachios or almonds.

  4. Fill the tartlets with prepared cherries, currants, plums, 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. Currant + plumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Pistachio + plumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + plumtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + pistachiotop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,233 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

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 puff and separate in the oven, giving the tartlets a light, flaky structure.
Meringue paste
Coats the pastry rings to add a sweet, crisp, white finish that sets as it dries.
Sugar
Sprinkled on the pastry, it caramelises slightly, adding sweetness and browning.
Preserve
Adds sweetness and fruit flavour and moisture to the filled tartlets.

The step that matters

Baking until lightly colored. Puff pastry relies on steam from its butter layers to rise. Underbaking leaves it doughy and pale, while overbaking dries it out and darkens the sugar too quickly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pistachio, plum. 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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