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Dessert

Cherry Tartlets

A pastry tartlet filled with cooked cherries, custard, and stiffly whipped egg whites, finished with a dusting of castor sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cherry Tartlets

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.

Prepare the cherries

  1. Remove the stalks from the cherries and place them in a small saucepan with moist sugar.

  2. Stand the saucepan in a larger one filled with boiling water and cook until the cherries are tender.

Bake the cases

  1. Meanwhile, line 10 to 12 deep tartlet pans with the pastry and fill them with rice, placing a buttered paper between the rice and the pastry.

  2. Bake the pastry in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

Make the custard and assemble

  1. Once the cherries are cooked, strain the syrup into a small saucepan, add the beaten egg yolks, and stir over low heat until the custard thickens.

  2. Fill the tartlet cases with cherries, cover with custard, and top with stiffly whipped egg whites.

  3. Sprinkle with castor sugar and return to the oven until the egg whites harden and color slightly.

  4. Serve hot or cold.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Short crust pastry
Forms the baked tartlet case that holds the cherries and custard.
Cooking cherries
Provide the fruit filling, which softens and releases syrup when cooked.
Eggs
Thicken the custard and, as whipped whites, give the topping its light, set structure.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the cherries and helps form their syrup.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard over low heat. Egg yolks set into a thick custard only gently; high heat or too little stirring can curdle them. Stir steadily until it thickens and coats a spoon.

“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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