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Dessert

Cherry Tartlets

A pastry tartlet filled with cherries and custard, topped with whipped egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cherry Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove the stalks from the cherries and place them in a small saucepan with the moist sugar.

  2. Stand the saucepan in a larger one filled with boiling water and cook until the cherries are tender.

Bake the cases

  1. Line 5 or 6 deep tartlet pans with the pastry.

  2. Fill the lined pans with rice. Place greased paper between the rice and the pastry.

  3. Bake the lined pans in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

Make the custard and assemble

  1. Strain the syrup into a small saucepan.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolk. Stir over low heat until the custard thickens.

  3. Fill the tartlet cases with cherries. Cover with custard.

  4. Top with stiffly whisked egg white. Sprinkle castor sugar.

  5. Return to the oven until the egg white hardens and lightly colors. Serve hot or cold.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cherries
Provide the fruit filling, which softens and sweetens as it cooks in its syrup.
Short-crust pastry
Forms the crisp, golden case that holds the filling.
Egg
The yolk thickens the custard and the whisked white sets into a light topping.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the cherries and helps form a syrup for the custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over low heat. Egg yolk thickens as it heats, but if the heat is too high it can scramble and turn grainy. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth.

“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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