Name: Cranberry Tart
Ingredients: 1 quart cranberries (Swedish, American, or Russian); ½ lemon (juiced); ¼ pound moist or pounded loaf sugar; puff paste or tart paste (for covering)

Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Cranberry Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

1 quart cranberries (Swedish, American, or Russian)
½ lemon (juiced)
¼ pound moist or pounded loaf sugar
puff paste or tart paste (for covering)

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Pick and wash the cranberries in several waters.

Assemble and bake

Combine cranberries, lemon juice, and sugar in a dish.
Cover the mixture with puff pastry or tart pastry.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 45 minutes.

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.

Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Cranberries: Provide the tart fruit filling that cooks down into the body of the tart.
Sugar: Sweetens the filling and balances the cranberries' sharp tartness.
Lemon: Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and sharpens the fruit.

“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.