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Dessert

Princess Tartlets

A pastry tartlet filled with jam and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and nuts match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Princess Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

  1. Cut the cooled Genoese pastry into rounds about 1½ inches in diameter.

  2. Use a small cutter to remove a piece from the center of each round.

Assemble the tartlets

  1. Fill the center with jam.

  2. Whip the cream until stiff, then add sugar and essence.

  3. Pile the whipped cream on top of the jam.

  4. Optionally, color the cream with cochineal or sprinkle with candied fruits or minced pistachio nuts.

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. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

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

  2. Vanilla + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together407 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + nutstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together638 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Genoese pastry
Provides the light sponge base that holds the jam and cream.
Heavy cream
Whips into a stiff topping that gives the tartlets their light, airy texture.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor in the centre beneath the cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the whipped cream and helps it hold its shape.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until stiff. Cream must be whipped to the right stiffness so it holds a mound on the jam. Under-whipped cream spreads and runs, while over-whipped cream turns grainy and can separate.

Swap the pistachio

The recipe marks pistachio as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, vanilla, nuts):

  1. Pistachiothe original
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, vanilla, nuts. 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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