Why it works: Apple and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,501 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. 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 apples
Pare, core, and slice the apples.
Put the apples in a saucepan with butter, sugar, and vanilla.
Make the apple sauce
Cover and cook slowly for 30 minutes, or until tender.
Rub the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.
Assemble the tarts
Roll out the puff pastry to ½ inch thick and cut 12 pieces, each 3 inches square.
Wet the surface of 6 pastry squares with beaten egg.
Divide the apple sauce over the wet squares and cover with the remaining pastry pieces.
Pinch the edges together to seal.
Bake and serve
Glaze the tops with egg and dust with granulated sugar.
Bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).
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.
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Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,501 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together35,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,050 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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
- Apples
- Cook down into a tender sauce that provides the filling's bulk, moisture and fruity flavor.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the apple filling and helps the glazed tops brown in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds richness and fat to the apple filling, carrying flavor through the sauce.
- Puff pastry
- Bakes into flaky, layered pastry that encloses the apple filling.
- Egg
- Seals the pastry layers and gives the tops a glossy, browned glaze.
The step that matters
Pinch the edges together to seal. A tight seal keeps the wet apple filling inside the pastry, so it cooks in place rather than leaking out and leaving the pastry soggy or the edges unevenly baked.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, vanilla, egg):
- Figfits better
- Peachfits better
- Coconutfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, vanilla, egg. 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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