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Golden Syrup Tarts

A pastry tart filled with golden syrup and topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and syrup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,540 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Golden Syrup Tarts

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.

Make the dough

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

  2. Rub half the lard and margarine into the flour.

  3. Gradually mix in water to form a stiff dough.

  4. Roll out the dough and spread the remaining margarine and lard over it.

  5. Fold and roll the dough several times, then roll out to ½ inch thickness.

Fill and bake

  1. Place the rolled dough in tart tins.

  2. Fill each tart with 1 teaspoon of Golden Syrup and drop in 2 teaspoons of bread crumbs.

  3. 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.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Syrup + breadtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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 dough once mixed with water.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the pastry short and tender when layered into the dough.
Margarine
Adds fat that creates flaky layers as the dough is folded and rolled.
Lyle's golden syrup
Provides sweetness and a rich, caramelised flavour as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Soaks up some of the syrup so the filling sets rather than running everywhere.

The step that matters

Rolling and folding the fat into the dough. Spreading the fat over the dough and folding it several times creates separate layers. If the fat softens or is worked in too much, the layers blend and the pastry becomes dense rather than flaky.

“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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