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Dessert

Apple Tart

A tart of sliced apples baked in a crust, finished with egg, butter, cream, sugar, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make enough crust for two pies.

  2. Peel and cut the apples, then fill the dish without an under crust.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until the apples are soft and the crust is brown.

  2. Remove the crust and turn it upside down on a plate.

  3. While the apples are hot, break and stir in the egg, butter, and cream.

  4. Sweeten to taste and add cinnamon.

  5. Serve with cream.

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 + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 soften during baking to form the tart's body.
Egg
Binds the warm apple filling and helps it set into a custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the filling and blends with the egg.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg, butter, and cream while the apples are hot. The egg proteins set when heated, so stirring the custard-like mixture into hot apples lets it thicken gently. If the apples have cooled, the egg may not bind evenly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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