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Dessert

Cherry Tartlets

Cherry tartlets are pastry cases filled with cherries, custard, and whipped egg whites.

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.

  2. Place the cherries in a small jar with the moist sugar.

  3. Stand the jar in a saucepan.

  4. Surround the jar with boiling water.

  5. Cook until the cherries are tender.

Line and bake the cases

  1. Line 10 or 12 deep tartlet pans with the pastry.

  2. Fill the pans with rice.

  3. Place a buttered paper between the rice and the pastry.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

Make the custard

  1. Strain the syrup from the cherries into a small saucepan.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Stir over low heat until the custard thickens.

Assemble and finish

  1. Fill the tartlet cases with cherries.

  2. Cover with custard.

  3. Top with stiffly whipped egg whites.

  4. Sprinkle with caster sugar.

  5. Return to the oven until the egg whites harden and color slightly.

  6. 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

Short crust pastry
Forms the crisp, golden case that holds the filling.
Cooking cherries
Provide the main fruit flavor and tender texture in the filling.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the cherries and draws out their syrup as they cook.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whipped whites form the light topping that sets and browns.

The step that matters

Stir the custard over low heat. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the heat is too high they scramble and turn grainy, so stir steadily until it just coats a spoon.

“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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