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Tartlets a LA Princesse

A pastry tartlet filled with a creamy lobster, oyster, and egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Tartlets a LA Princesse

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.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Prepare the pastry a few hours in advance.

  2. Roll it out to about ½ inch thick.

  3. Stamp out rounds about 3 inches in diameter with a fancy cutter.

  4. Stamp out the same number of rounds with a 2-inch cutter.

  5. Remove the centers with a 1-inch cutter.

  6. Brush the tops of the large rounds with beaten egg.

  7. Place the smaller rounds on top.

  8. Brush again with egg.

  9. Bake for 15 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Add the cream, liquid from the oysters, salt, pepper, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  4. Boil for three minutes until thick.

  5. Remove the gills from the oysters, drop them into boiling water for half a minute, and chop them into smaller pieces.

  6. Add the oysters to the sauce.

  7. Add the grated cheese.

  8. Add one finely chopped hard-boiled egg.

  9. Add chopped lobster.

  10. Add white and yolk of egg.

  11. Add parsley.

Assemble

  1. Fill each pastry case with the mixture.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cream + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Butter and flour 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

Puff pastry
Its layers puff with steam in the oven, forming the crisp, flaky case.
Butter
Melted with flour, it forms the roux that thickens the sauce and adds richness.
Flour
Cooked with the melted butter, it thickens the cream into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, and thickens the sauce as it boils.
Hard-boiled eggs
Their chopped whites and yolks give the filling body and a firm, creamy texture.
Oysters
Provide the main seafood flavour and a tender, briny texture in the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce for three minutes until thick. Flour must be cooked past raw-starch stage to thicken fully and lose its pasty taste. Stopping early leaves a thin filling that runs out of the pastry cases and a floury flavour.

“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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