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Dessert

Strawberry Tart, or Vol Au Vent

A chilled strawberry tart with a vol-au-vent crust, sweetened with clarified sugar and Madeira wine, flavored with lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Strawberry Tart, or Vol Au Vent

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Pick and place the strawberries in a basin.

  2. Add the clarified sugar, Madeira wine, and lemon juice.

  3. Mix gently without breaking the strawberries.

Fill and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into the prepared vol-au-vent crust.

  2. Keep the tart very cool.

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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + madeira winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Madeira wine + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and most of the filling's moisture and bulk.
Clarified sugar
Adds sweetness and body to the juices, balancing the fruit's tartness.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic depth and a rich, slightly caramel-like flavour to the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and keeps the fruit flavour fresh.

The step that matters

Keep the tart very cool. Warm strawberries release their juice, which soaks into the pastry and makes it soft and soggy. Keeping everything cold helps the crust stay crisp and the filling hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, madeira wine. 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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