Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Apple Tarts
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.
Prepare the apples
Pare and slice the apples.
Stew the apples until tender with the sugar and ½ cup of water.
Make the pastry
Place the flour on a clean surface.
Create a hollow in the center and add the salt, egg yolk, and butter.
Mix these ingredients with your fingers, then gradually add enough cold water to form a stiff paste.
Roll out the paste on a floured surface until it no longer sticks.
Work the butter to press out the buttermilk, then dry it with a clean cloth.
Roll out the paste into a circle, place the butter in the center, fold the edges over the butter, and flatten it.
Fold the dough over itself and roll it out again.
Chill in a cool place for 5 minutes.
Assemble and bake
Line pie plates with the dough, fill with the stewed apples, cover with more pastry, and brush with beaten egg or dust with powdered sugar.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.
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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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + appletop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,706 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the pastry once mixed with water and fat.
- Butter
- Fat that is folded into the dough to create flaky, tender layers.
- Egg
- Binds the dough and, when brushed on top, helps the crust brown.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the apples and helps them stew to a soft, cohesive filling.
- Apples
- Provide the main filling, softening as they stew into a moist base.
The step that matters
Keeping the butter cold while shaping the dough. If the butter softens or melts into the flour, it will not form separate layers, so the pastry becomes dense instead of flaky. Overworking the dough also develops gluten, making it tough, so the paste should be handled gently and chilled when needed.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, 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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