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Dessert

Lemon Syrup Tart

A tart with a lemon‑syrup filling and lattice pastry top.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lemon Syrup Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Rub in the lard or dripping until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

  4. Add enough cold water to form a firm paste.

  5. Roll out the pastry and line a greased tart tin with it.

Fill and bake

  1. In another bowl, combine the bread crumbs, lemon juice, and syrup.

  2. Spread the mixture over the pastry.

  3. Cut strips of pastry and lay them in a lattice pattern on top.

  4. Bake for 30 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.

  1. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the pastry once mixed with water.
Lard or clarified dripping
Rubbed into the flour to make the pastry short and tender.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the syrup and lemon juice to form a moist, set filling.
Lyle’s golden syrup
Provides sweetness and a rich, caramel-like flavor and moisture to the filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the pastry to give it a light rise.

The step that matters

Rubbing in the lard or dripping. If the fat is not rubbed in until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, the fat will not coat the flour evenly. This makes the pastry tough instead of short and tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, bread, syrup. 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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