Name: Treacle Tart
Ingredients: 1 large teacupful of treacle (about 1½ cups); Grated rind of 1 lemon; 2 tablespoons of bread crumbs

Why it works: Lemon and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,445 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Treacle Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

1 large teacupful of treacle (about 1½ cups)
Grated rind of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons of bread crumbs

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

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make and bake

In a bowl, mix the treacle, grated lemon rind, and bread crumbs together.
Pour the mixture into a flat dish lined with pastry.
Bake for 20 minutes.

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.

Lemon + breadtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,445 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

Treacle: Provides the sweetness, dark flavour and thick, sticky body of the filling.
Bread crumbs: Absorb the treacle's moisture and help thicken the filling as it bakes.
Lemon rind: Adds a bright citrus aroma that balances the sweetness of the treacle.

“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.