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Dessert

Tarts and Puffs

A pastry tart or puff filled with fruit and sugar, baked with lemon peel and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Tarts and Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crust

  1. Butter the bottoms of tin patties and place a thin layer of crust inside.

  2. If using glass or china, only use an upper crust.

Prepare the fruit

  1. For apples and pears, cut into quarters, remove cores, and simmer in just enough water to cover until tender, adding lemon peel.

Fill and bake

  1. Add fine sugar at the bottom, then layer in the fruit, and sprinkle more sugar on top.

  2. Prepare the patties with sugar at the bottom, add the cooked fruit, and top with lemon juice and cooking liquid.

  3. Cover the tarts and bake in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C).

  4. Cover with the lid and bake in a slow oven.

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. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

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

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

Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky crust that holds the filling.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juices that form a syrup.
Fruit
Provides the main flavour and moisture of the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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