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Dessert

Chocolate Tarts

Chocolate tarts made with melted chocolate, corn starch, eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and butter, topped with lemon-flavored meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,287 recipes. Both carry 4-methoxybenzaldehyde, which smells sweet, anise. The science ↓

Chocolate Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Rub the chocolate smooth in the milk and heat to boiling.

  2. Stir in the corn-starch and cook for five minutes until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and pour into a bowl to cool.

Combine and bake

  1. Beat the yolks and whites of two eggs with the sugar.

  2. When the chocolate mixture is almost cold, combine with the egg mixture and vanilla, stirring until light.

  3. Bake in tartlet shells until done.

Top and serve

  1. Top with meringue made from the whites of two eggs and two tablespoons of sugar, flavored with lemon juice.

  2. 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. Vanilla + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Yolks enrich and thicken the filling, while whites whip into the meringue topping.
Chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavor and body of the filling.
Corn-starch
Thickens the chocolate mixture as it cooks.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate melts into.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the meringue.

The step that matters

Combining the cooled chocolate with the egg mixture. If the chocolate is still hot, it can cook the egg yolks and make the filling grainy or curdled. Waiting until it is almost cold keeps the eggs smooth and the filling light.

“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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