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French Apricot Tart

A puff pastry tart filled with apricots, syrup, sherry, and garnished with crystallized cherries and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

French Apricot Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Roll puff pastry thin.

  2. Cut out a piece the size of a plate.

  3. Place the pastry on a clean baking tin.

  4. Wet the edge with water.

  5. Add a 1-inch wide border around the edge.

  6. Dock the pastry with a fork.

  7. Sprinkle fine sugar over the pastry.

  8. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make the apricot syrup

  1. Cut apricots in halves. Break the stones. Blanch the kernels in boiling water.

  2. Combine cold water, white sugar, and lemon juice in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer.

  3. Add apricots. Simmer slowly for about 5 minutes. Carefully remove the apricots.

  4. Reduce the cooking liquid to a thick syrup. Stir in sherry.

Assemble and finish

  1. Arrange apricots in the tart. Pour syrup over the apricots.

  2. Place a kernel and a crystallized cherry between every other apricot.

  3. Decorate the border with red currant jelly.

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. Apricot + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Apricot + red curranttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Lemon + red curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + red curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Bakes into flaky, layered layers that form the tart's crisp base and border.
Apricots
Provide the fruit flavour and soft texture that make up the tart's filling.
White sugar
Sweetens the poaching liquid and helps form the thick syrup that glazes the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet syrup and balances the apricot flavour.
Sherry
Adds aromatic depth to the syrup once it has reduced.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy finish to the pastry border.

The step that matters

Reducing the cooking liquid to a thick syrup. If the syrup is too thin it will soak into the pastry and make the base soggy, while over-reducing can make it sticky and overly sweet. Reduce gently and check the consistency before adding the sherry.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, apricot, sherry, red currant):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, apricot, sherry, red currant. 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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