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Dessert

Chocolate Tartlets

Chocolate tartlets made with melted chocolate, corn flour, eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, salt, butter, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Chocolate Tartlets

Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Chocolate Tartlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate base

  1. Melt the chocolate in the milk until it boils.

  2. Stir in the dissolved corn-flour and mix until thickened; set aside to cool.

  3. Beat the yolks and 2 egg whites with the sugar.

  4. Mix the beaten mixture with the cooled chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, salt, and butter until light.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in pastry shells until done.

  2. Top with meringue made from 2 whipped egg whites, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1 teaspoon lemon juice.

  3. Serve when cold.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Yolks and whites add structure and richness to the filling, and whipped whites form the meringue topping.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and rich body of the filling.
Corn-flour
Thickens the chocolate mixture as it is stirred and cooked.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the whipped meringue.
Milk
Liquid that melts the chocolate into a smooth, pourable base.

The step that matters

Stir in the dissolved corn-flour and mix until thickened. Cornflour thickens only when the mixture is heated and stirred, and it can lump if added undissolved. Stirring keeps the starch evenly dispersed so the filling sets smooth rather than grainy or lumpy.

“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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