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Dessert

Banberry Tarts

A tart made with lemon, sugar, egg, nuts, raisins, soda crackers, and pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nuts and raisin work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 490 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Banberry Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Roll the soda crackers and mix with lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, egg, chopped nuts, and chopped raisins.

  2. Cut pie crust into rounds the size of a saucer.

Fill and bake

  1. Wet the edges of each round, place a spoonful of the mixture in the center, and fold the crust over.

  2. Prick the tops with a fork and 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. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar 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

Soda crackers
Crumbs absorb the lemon juice and egg, giving the filling body so it holds together.
Lemon
Juice and rind add acidity and bright aroma that cut through the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the crust brown as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the filling and helps it set as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Fold and seal the crust edges. Wet edges must press together firmly before baking, or the filling can leak out and the tart may open in the oven.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar, egg, raisin. 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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