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Dessert

Breakfast

A pastry shell filled with lemon custard and topped with meringue, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks, lemon juice, nutmeg, and brandy.

  3. Whip the egg whites until very light and fold into the mixture.

Bake and top

  1. Pour the mixture into pastry shells and bake until set and a skin forms on top.

  2. Spread the meringue made from whipped egg whites, sugar, and lemon juice on top without removing from the oven.

  3. Bake until the meringue begins to color.

  4. Serve 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Nutmeg + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,311 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and a tender, fine texture to the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the filling as they set, giving the tart a smooth, sliceable body.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they give the meringue topping its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances sweetness and brightens the filling.

The step that matters

Bake the filling until just set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, so underbaking leaves the filling runny while overbaking makes it grainy or weeping. Watch for a set center and a skin on top before adding the meringue.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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