Name: Berry Tarts
Ingredients: Pie crust; Strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, or other seasonal berries; Sugar; Sweet cream

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Berry Tarts

Ingredients

Pie crust
Strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, or other seasonal berries
Sugar
Sweet cream

Directions

Prepare

Line small pie tins with pie crust and bake until golden.

Assemble and serve

Just before serving, fill each tart with your choice of berries.
Sprinkle a little sugar over the berries.
Add 1 tablespoon of sweet cream to each tart.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Pie crust: Forms the tart shell that holds the filling and browns in the oven for structure and flavor.
Berries: Provide the fresh fruit filling with natural sweetness and tartness.
Sugar: Sweetens the berries and draws out their juices slightly.
Sweet cream: Adds richness and a creamy moisture that balances the tart fruit.

“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.