Skip to main content
Dessert

Chocolate Tart

A baked chocolate tart with sugar, egg yolks, spices, almonds, lemon juice, baking powder, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Chocolate Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar and egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Add cinnamon, cloves, allspice, melted chocolate, chopped almonds, lemon juice, and baking powder. Stir until smooth.

  3. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a tart pan and bake for 25-30 minutes or until set.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the tart its light, airy lift when folded in.
Egg yolks
Bind the batter and add richness and set structure as the tart bakes.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and, as it cools, a dense, fudgy body.
Almonds
Add body and a nutty texture, with ground almonds adding moisture to the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the yolks blend smoothly.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stir gently so the whipped egg whites keep their air. Overmixing deflates the foam, leaving a denser tart that rises less and sets unevenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, cinnamon, clove, allspice, chocolate, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, cinnamon, clove, allspice, chocolate, almond. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesChocolate CreamChocolate Cream171 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes