Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓
Cranberry Tart
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Pick and wash the cranberries in several waters.
Place the cranberries in a dish and add the lemon juice and powdered sugar.
Cover the mixture with puff pastry or tart paste.
Bake and serve
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 45 minutes.
If using tart paste, remove it from the oven 5 minutes before done, ice it, then return it to the oven.
Serve the tart cold.
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.
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Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Lemon and sugar 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
- Cranberries
- Provide the tart filling's bulk and its sharp, tangy flavour.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the tart and balances the cranberries' acidity.
- Lemon juice
- Adds extra acidity that brightens the cranberry flavour.
- Puff pastry or tart paste
- Forms the crust that encloses the filling and bakes to a crisp, golden shell.
The step that matters
Removing tart paste to ice it. Icing the paste five minutes before the end, then returning it to the oven, lets the surface set and brown without overbaking. Timing matters because the paste can darken or dry out if left too long.
“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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