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Dessert

Cream Tarts

A tart with a creamy filling made from milk, butter, sugar, eggs, lemon, and puff pastry shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Tarts

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.

Make the curd

  1. Combine the milk in a vessel set in another vessel.

  2. Heat the milk until it curdles, then strain off the milk.

  3. Rub the curd through a strainer and mix in butter, sugar, beaten eggs, and lemon juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Line small pans with puff pastry and fill with the mixture.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 to 15 minutes until firm in the center.

  3. Serve cold with whipped cream.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the filling into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Milk
Forms the curd base that gives the filling its body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the filling.
White sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it bake to a tender set.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright aroma to balance the sweet filling.

The step that matters

Bake until firm in the center. Eggs set as they heat, so underbaking leaves the filling runny while overbaking can make it grainy or cracked. Checking the center for firmness shows when the custard has set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, 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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