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Dessert

Orange Tart

A tart made from Seville oranges, sugar, butter, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,058 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Orange Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Squeeze, pulp, and boil the Seville oranges until tender.

  2. Weigh the oranges and use double the weight in sugar.

  3. Beat the oranges and sugar together to form a paste.

  4. Add the juice and pulp of the oranges and the butter, then beat until combined.

Assemble and serve

  1. Line a shallow dish with the puff pastry and fill it with the orange paste.

  2. Optionally, ice the tart before serving.

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. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Seville oranges
Provide the bitter, acidic flavour and the pectin that helps the paste set.
Sugar
Sweetens the bitter oranges and, with the fruit, thickens the paste into a set filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother, glossier texture to the orange paste.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky shell that holds the orange paste.

The step that matters

Beat the oranges and sugar into a paste. The paste must be beaten until smooth and thick enough to hold its shape. Too little cooking or beating leaves the filling runny, while the sugar and the fruit's pectin together are what allow it to set firmly when cooled.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, walnut, butter. 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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