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Dessert

To Make an Apple Tart

A pastry tart filled with a mixture of codlins, eggs, butter, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Make an Apple Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Scald the codlins, let them cool, then skin them.

  2. Beat the pulp with a silver spoon until fine.

Make the custard

  1. Mix the yolks and whites of the eggs and beat until well combined.

  2. Add grated nutmeg and sugar to taste.

  3. Melt the butter and beat it until it resembles thick cream.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover a tin petty‑pan with puff pastry and pour in the mixture without covering it.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes, then slip it out onto a dish and sprinkle with fine sugar.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Codlins
Provide the apple pulp that forms the body of the filling.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the filling set when baked.
Egg whites
Add structure and lightness to the custard as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the crisp, flaky base that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Beating the butter until it resembles thick cream. Butter beaten until thick and aerated blends evenly into the mixture; if it is too warm or melted, the filling can turn greasy and fail to set smoothly.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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

More apple tart recipes

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