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Dessert

Apple Tart

A tart with sliced apples, sugar, orange marmalade, and a custard made from milk, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the tart

  1. Line a deep round pie tin with rich pie paste.

  2. Fill the tin three-quarters full with sliced apples.

  3. Dredge the apples with sugar.

  4. Add a twist of crust around the edge.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until nearly done.

  2. Spread a thin layer of orange marmalade on top.

  3. In a bowl, mix milk, sugar, and egg yolks to make a custard.

  4. Pour the custard over the tart.

  5. Return the tart to the oven.

  6. Bake until the custard is set.

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 + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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 and tart flavour as they soften during baking.
Egg yolks
Set the custard so it firms into a sliceable layer over the fruit.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that bakes into a soft, creamy layer.
Orange marmalade
Adds a thin layer of sweetness and citrus aroma beneath the custard.

The step that matters

Baking until the custard is set. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overbaking can make the custard curdle or turn grainy and watery. Check for a set centre that jiggles only slightly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, milk, 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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