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Dessert

Plum Tart

A pastry tart filled with plums, sweetened with moist sugar, finished with an egg white glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Plum 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

  1. Line the edge of a tart dish with puff pastry or short crust pastry.

  2. Fill the dish with plums and sprinkle a little moist sugar over them, adjusting the amount based on the plums' quality.

Bake and glaze

  1. Cover the dish with pastry and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. For a glazed finish, remove the tart from the oven before it is fully done.

  3. Brush the tart with whisked egg white and sprinkle with finely sifted sugar.

  4. Add a few drops of water and return the tart to the oven to set the glaze.

  5. Alternatively, brush the tart with cold water and sprinkle with white sugar before baking.

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. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Plum + eggtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together794 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Plums
Provide the fruit filling and its juices, which soften and sweeten during baking.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the plums and draws out some of their juice.
Egg white
Brushed on top, it forms a glossy, lightly set glaze.
Puff pastry or short crust pastry
Forms the tart case and top crust, providing structure and flaky or crisp texture.

The step that matters

Removing the tart before it is fully done. For a glazed finish, the tart leaves the oven early so the egg white glaze can be applied and set without over-browning or drying the fruit. Pulling it too late can leave the glaze dull and the pastry overcooked.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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