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Dessert

Strawberry Tart, or Vol Au Vent

A chilled strawberry tart served in a vol-au-vent pastry shell.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Tart, or Vol Au Vent

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the strawberries, then place them in a basin.

  2. Add the clarified sugar, Madeira wine, and lemon juice to the strawberries.

  3. Gently mix the ingredients without breaking the strawberries.

Assemble and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture into the prepared vol-au-vent or crust.

  2. Keep the tart very cool 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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + madeira winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Madeira wine + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Fresh strawberries
Provide the main fruit, flavour and bulk of the filling.
Clarified sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out juice to form a light syrup.
Madeira wine
Adds aromatic depth and a rich, fortified flavour to the strawberries.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the fruit flavour.

The step that matters

Gently mix the ingredients without breaking the strawberries. Strawberries are delicate, and bruising breaks their cell walls, releasing excess juice that makes the filling watery and dulls its appearance.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, madeira wine. 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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