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.
Prepare the base
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour.
Finely chop the blanched almonds and add them to the bowl.
Sieve the hard-boiled yolks and mix them in with 2 ozs. of sugar and grated lemon rind.
Form the mixture 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 mix in 2 ozs. of sugar and a little jam.
Spread the egg-white 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
- Rubbed into the flour, it adds richness and a tender, crumbly texture to the base.
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the tart base once combined with butter and other dry ingredients.
- Almonds
- Finely chopped, they add nutty flavour and body to the paste.
- Hard-boiled egg yolks
- Sieved and mixed in, they make the paste smooth and rich, adding moisture and tenderness.
- Egg whites
- Whipped until stiff, they form a light, airy meringue topping that sets in the oven.
The step that matters
Whipping the egg whites until stiff. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold stiff peaks, because the foam's trapped air and protein structure give the topping its lift and light texture. Under-whipped whites will spread flat and turn dense.
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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