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Dessert

Sand Tarts

A sweet pastry made with sugar, butter, eggs, flour, baking powder, water, topped with sugar, cinnamon, and blanched almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sand Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Add the eggs, beaten separately, and mix well.

  3. Stir in the baking powder and water.

  4. Gradually add the flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin on a floured surface and cut into squares.

  2. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on top of each square.

  3. Place a blanched almond in the center of each square.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the dough richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its stiff, rollable structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lift the dough and keep the tarts from becoming dense.

The step that matters

Gradually add the flour until the dough is stiff enough to roll. Adding too much flour at once or too much overall makes the dough tough and dry, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to cut. Adding it gradually lets you stop when the dough is workable.

“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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