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Dessert

Pumpkin Tart

A baked tart filled with stewed pumpkin, sugar, and lemon, encased in short crust pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sugar 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 ↓

Pumpkin Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a pie plate with short crust pastry.

Make the filling

  1. Stew the diced pumpkin with a little water until tender.

  2. Add sugar and lemon juice to the pumpkin and mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Brush the pastry with egg white.

  2. Pour the pumpkin mixture into the pastry and bake until the crust is golden.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Pumpkin + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together600 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pumpkin + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,350 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Pumpkin
Provides the bulk and soft, smooth body of the filling once stewed until tender.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness of the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the lemon and the mild flavour of the pumpkin.
Short crust pastry
Forms the structural base that holds the filling and bakes to a golden, crisp shell.

The step that matters

Brushing the pastry with egg white. A thin layer of egg white seals the raw pastry so the moist pumpkin filling is less likely to soak in and leave the crust soggy during baking.

Swap the pumpkin

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. 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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