Name: Raspberry Tart
Ingredients: thin puff pastry; raspberries; fine sugar; ½ pint cream; 2 egg yolks

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Raspberry Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

Roll out the thin puff pastry and lay it in a patty pan.
Add raspberries and sprinkle fine sugar over them.

Bake and fill

Cover with a lid and bake until golden.
Once baked, cut it open and pour in the cream mixed with egg yolks.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together42,166 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Thin puff pastry: Forms the crisp, flaky case that holds the filling.
Raspberries: Provide fruity flavour and a tart edge that balances the sweetness.
Fine sugar: Sweetens the raspberries and helps them soften as they bake.
Cream: Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Egg yolks: Thicken the cream mixture into a set, custard-like filling.

“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.