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Dessert

German Sand Tart

A sweet cake made with powdered sugar, flour, butter, eggs, lemon juice, and coated with cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

German Sand 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. Butter the inside of a cake mold and coat it thickly with fine Zwieback or cracker crumbs.

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat together the powdered sugar, flour, butter, and lemon juice.

  2. Add the eggs and flour alternately, mixing well.

  3. Stir the batter in the same direction for 1 hour.

  4. Pour the batter into the prepared mold and bake for 1 hour.

Variation

  1. For a variation, bake in 2 layers and fill with jelly, then top with rum icing.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine, tender crumb to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense, sliceable crumb together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the cake tender and moist.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stirring the batter in one direction for 1 hour. Long, steady stirring develops the gluten and incorporates air evenly, so the cake bakes dense and fine-textured rather than uneven or tough. Stirring should be kept consistent throughout the full hour.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, egg. 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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