Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Rose Tartlets
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Break the eggs into a bowl and add salt and rosewater.
Stir in flour until the mixture is thick enough to roll out.
Roll the dough thin and cut out shapes with a fancy cutter.
Fry and finish
Fry the shapes in boiling lard until golden brown.
Dust with powdered sugar while hot.
Once cool, fill the center of each tartlet with jelly.
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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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Bind the dough and add richness and structure once cooked.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled thin and hold its shape.
- Jelly
- Adds sweetness and a fruity filling to each cooled tartlet.
- Powdered sugar
- Adds sweetness and a light dusting that shows against the golden surface.
The step that matters
Fry the shapes in boiling lard until golden brown. The lard must be hot enough to crisp the outside quickly; if it is too cool, the dough absorbs fat and turns greasy and heavy instead of crisp and browned.
“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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