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Dessert

Cranberry Tarts

A pastry tart filled with cranberry sauce, made with lard dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cranberry 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 dough

  1. In a bowl, mix lard, sugar, water, and egg white until combined.

  2. Gradually add flour until the mixture can be rolled out easily.

Shape the tarts

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into small circles.

  2. Form a rim around each circle with additional dough.

  3. Fill each tart with cranberry sauce.

  4. Cover with another round of dough, cutting three holes in the top.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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 + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + cranberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together268 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Lard
Provides fat that keeps the pastry tender and flaky by coating flour particles.
Egg white
Adds protein that helps bind the dough and gives it structure as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the pastry its structure.
Cranberry sauce
Supplies the filling, bringing tartness and sweetness with moisture.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the mixture can be rolled out easily. Adding flour in small amounts lets you stop at the right consistency. Too much flour makes the pastry dry and tough, while too little leaves it sticky and hard to shape.

Swap the cranberry

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Cranberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, sauce. 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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