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Dessert

Apple Tarts

Apple tarts made with sliced apples, eggs, lemon, butter, and puff pastry, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Tarts

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 the filling

  1. Scald the apples and let them cool.

  2. Peel the apples and break them into pieces.

  3. In a bowl, combine the apple pulp, eggs, lemon zest, and lemon juice.

  4. Melt the sweet butter and mix it into the apple mixture.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the puff pastry and cut it into small rounds.

  2. Fill the pastry rounds with the apple mixture.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, with moisture and a soft, tender texture when cooked.
Eggs
Bind the apple mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Lemon
Zest and juice add aroma and acidity that brighten the sweetness of the apples.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, layered case that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the apples cool before mixing. Adding the filling while the apples are still hot can cook the eggs unevenly and make the mixture runny, so it may not set properly in the pastry.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, lemon, 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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