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Dessert

Orange Tarts

A tart filled with orange juice, rind, sugar, butter, lemon juice, and cornstarch, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Juice the oranges and combine with the grated rind in a bowl.

  2. Add sugar, butter, lemon juice, and cornstarch; mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into tart shells without a cover.

  2. Bake until set and lightly golden.

  3. Serve warm or cold.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Oranges
Supply the juice and zest that give the filling its liquid and bright citrus flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the tartness of the citrus.
Butter
Adds fat for a richer, smoother mouthfeel in the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the orange flavour.
Cornstarch
Thickens the juice so the filling sets firm as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until set and lightly golden. Cornstarch thickens the juice and sets the filling as it heats. Underbaking leaves the filling runny, while overbaking can make it dry, tough, or weepy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Raspberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, lemon. 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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