Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Tart Shells
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.
Prepare the shells
Roll out the puff pastry thinly.
Cut out circles with a glass or biscuit cutter.
Cut out the center of two circles using a smaller cup.
Place the rings on a third circle and bake immediately.
Alternatively, line patty pans with the pastry.
Fill and top
For serving, fill the shells with jelly.
Top with meringue made from 1 egg white and 2 tablespoons sugar.
Brown the meringue in a 350°F (175°C) oven.
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.
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Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Puff pastry
- Its cold, layered dough puffs into flaky, crisp shell walls when baked.
- Egg
- The white whips into a foam that gives the meringue its airy, stable structure.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the meringue and helps it hold its shape and brown evenly.
- Jelly
- Provides the sweet, fruity filling that sits inside the baked shells.
The step that matters
Bake the pastry rings immediately. Puff pastry gets its height from cold fat layers that turn to steam in a hot oven. If the shaped pastry sits warm before baking, the fat softens and the layers collapse, so the shells come out flat and dense.
“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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