Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Cream 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.
Make the base
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Rub the butter into the flour.
Finely chop the blanched almonds and add them to the bowl.
Sieve the hard-boiled yolks into the mixture, then add 2 oz of sugar and grated lemon rind.
Mix the ingredients into a paste and shape it into a round tart.
Bake and top
Bake the tart until cooked, then let it cool.
Spread a layer of jam on top of the cooled tart.
Whip the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add 2 oz of sugar and a little jam.
Spread the whipped mixture over the tart and return it to the oven for a few minutes.
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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Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,673 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,655 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,245 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- Butter
- Coats the flour to create a short, tender crumb texture in the base.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the paste together as a tart shell.
- Almonds
- Add body, nutty flavour and richness to the base mixture.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the base and help bind it into a cohesive paste.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the topping its light, airy structure.
- Castor sugar
- Sweetens the base and topping and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.
The step that matters
Whipping the egg whites. Whip the whites until stiff before adding the sugar gradually. Stiff whites hold their shape and set airy in the oven, while under-whipped whites collapse and over-whipped whites turn grainy and dry.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, almond, egg, flour, sugar):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, almond, egg, flour, sugar. 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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