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Plum Tart

A tart of plums baked in short crust pastry with a sweet syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Plum Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Poach the plums

  1. Place the plums in a saucepan and cover with water.

  2. Add ½ pound of sugar and simmer until the plums are tender but not mashed.

  3. Remove the plums and drain the liquid.

Make the syrup

  1. Return the liquid to the saucepan, add ½ pound of sugar, and boil until it thickens into a syrup.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a flat dish with short crust pastry, baked lightly.

  2. Divide each plum, remove the stones, and spread the plums over the crust.

  3. Slowly pour the thick syrup over the plums, allowing it to soak in.

  4. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 10 minutes and serve.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Plum + syruptop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit filling and its tart flavour once tenderised.
Sugar
Sweetens the plums and, boiled down, thickens the liquid into a syrup.
Short crust pastry
Forms the flat base that holds the fruit and syrup.

The step that matters

Simmering the plums until tender but not mashed. Overcooking breaks down the fruit's cell walls so the plums turn to mush, while undercooking leaves them firm. Gentle simmering keeps the halves intact to hold their shape on the crust.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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