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Dessert

Lemok or Orange Tarts

A tart made with lemon or orange rind paste, sugar, butter, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,154 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Lemok or Orange Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Remove the yellow rind from the lemons or oranges and simmer it until the water is evaporated and the rind is almost a paste.

  2. Carefully remove any white pulp and seeds, keeping as much juice as possible.

  3. Add the remaining juice to the rind along with double the weight of the whole fruit in loaf sugar.

  4. Cook over low heat, mixing until well blended and paste-like.

  5. Stir in ½ ounce of fresh butter and mix again.

Assemble and serve

  1. Line tart tins with light puff pastry.

  2. Fill the tins with the orange or lemon paste.

  3. Optionally, add a little grated ginger for extra flavor.

  4. Cover with more pastry.

  5. Chill the covers before serving.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Lemons or seville oranges
Supply the rind for flavor and the juice that gives the filling its tartness.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the filling and, as it cooks down, thickens it into a paste.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a smoother texture to the finished paste.
Light puff pastry
Forms the flaky case and cover that hold the filling.

The step that matters

Simmering the rind until almost a paste. Rind simmered too briefly stays tough and bitter, while overcooking can scorch the sugars later. Cooking until the water has evaporated lets the rind soften evenly so the filling blends smoothly.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, butter. 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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