Why it works: Currant and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,734 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓
Currant- Jelly Tartlets, or Custarus
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the custard
In a bowl, stir 4 tablespoons of currant jelly and gradually add 12 tablespoons of beaten egg.
If the jelly is rich and sweet, no additional sugar is needed.
Line and fill the pans
Roll out the pastry very thin and line some pans with it.
Fill the lined pans with the custard mixture.
Bake
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes.
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.
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Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,734 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Currant jelly
- Adds sweetness and a fruity, tart flavor to the custard.
- Egg
- Thickens the custard and gives the filling structure as it bakes.
- Pastry
- Forms a crisp shell that holds the filling in each pan.
The step that matters
Roll the pastry very thin. Thin pastry bakes through and turns crisp within the short baking time. Thick dough stays raw and doughy underneath while the filling sets, so the shell can end up soggy or underbaked.
“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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