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Dessert

Sand Tarts

A sweet pastry made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, almonds, and cinnamon, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Sand Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and beat well.

  3. Incorporate the egg yolks and egg white, then mix in the flour to form a stiff dough.

  4. Roll the dough very thin and cut into shapes.

Decorate and bake

  1. Moisten the tops with egg white, then sprinkle with a mixture of fine sugar and cinnamon.

  2. Place one or two almonds on each cake.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven 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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff dough together after rolling and cutting.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown during baking.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, adding tenderness and binding the dough.
Egg white
Binds the dough and gives the tops a glossy surface for the sugar coating.
Almonds
Add nutty flavour and a crisp, decorative finish to each cake.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough very thin. Thin dough bakes quickly and turns crisp, while thick dough stays soft and doughy in the middle. Keeping an even thickness also helps the cookies bake evenly and brown at the same rate.

“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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