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Dessert

Orange Tart

A tart with orange and lemon zest, juice, eggs, sugar, and melted butter, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Orange Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Grate the peel of the orange and lemon, then squeeze their juice.

  2. Line a tart tin with puff pastry.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar until well combined.

  2. Add the melted butter, orange juice, and lemon juice to the egg mixture and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into the lined tart tin.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Eggs
Set the filling into a custard-like texture as they cook.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps balance the citrus acidity.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Orange juice
Provides the main citrus flavour and liquid to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the sweetness and brightens the flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the lined tart tin. The filling is thin and liquid before baking. It needs to be well mixed beforehand so the eggs, sugar and butter are evenly combined, and the pastry should be fully lined so the liquid does not leak during baking.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

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