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Dessert

Orange Tartlets

A tartlet filled with orange custard and topped with glace cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Tartlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the orange mixture

  1. Combine cold water, sugar, grated orange rind, and lemon juice in a pan.

  2. Stir until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Add the yolks of the eggs.

  4. Stir until the mixture just comes to a boil.

  5. Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

  6. Gently fold the egg whites into the orange mixture.

Bake and fill

  1. Line deep tartlet tins with pastry.

  2. Place a square of bread crust in each tin to keep them hollow.

  3. Bake the tartlets until golden.

  4. Remove the bread crust.

  5. Fill the cooled tartlets with the orange mixture.

  6. Garnish with pieces of glace cherries.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Orange + breadtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,084 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the mixture and whites, whisked and folded in, lighten its texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps give it a smooth, set body.
Orange rind
Adds the main orange aroma and flavour to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sharp orange flavour.
Pastry
Forms a crisp, sturdy shell that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Stir the yolks into the mixture until it just comes to a boil. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can curdle them into a grainy texture. Stop heating as soon as the mixture just boils, and keep stirring so it cooks evenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, egg, bread. 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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