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Dessert

Black Currant Tartlets

Small pastry shells filled with black currants and sweetened cream, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Black Currant Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cook the black currants with the sugar and water in a jar on the stove or in a slow oven until soft.

Make the shells

  1. Line 12 patty pans with short crust paste.

  2. Fill the lined pans with rice.

  3. Place buttered paper on top of the rice.

  4. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is crisp.

Fill and serve

  1. Once cooled, fill the tartlets with the prepared black currants and syrup.

  2. Top the tartlets with stiffly whipped, sweetened cream.

  3. Serve the tartlets 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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Black currant + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Black currants
Provide the tart flavour and the juice that thickens into the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps the syrup thicken as it cooks.
Short crust paste
Forms the crisp, fat-rich shell that holds the filling.
Cream
Adds richness, and whipping traps air to form a light, stable topping.

The step that matters

Bake the shells until crisp. The pastry must be fully baked before filling. Rice and paper hold the base flat while it sets, and a fully baked crust resists soaking up the juicy filling so it stays crisp.

Swap the black currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Black currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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