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Dessert

Plum Tart and Cream

A tart of plums topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Plum Tart and Cream

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. Stem and stone the plums.

  2. Fill a deep pie plate or shallow pudding dish with the plums.

  3. Strew sugar over the plums.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with pie crust and cut slits in the pastry for steam to escape.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  3. To serve, lift the crust and place it upside down on a large plate.

  4. Turn the plums out onto the crust and top with whipped 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Plum + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together369 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Blue plums or ripe green gages
Provide the fruit filling, which softens and releases juice as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out juice that forms the filling.
Pie crust
Forms the pastry base and top that holds the baked plums together.
Whipped cream
Adds cool, rich creaminess that contrasts with the warm, tart fruit.

The step that matters

Cutting slits in the crust. Slits let steam escape during baking, so pressure does not build under the pastry and push it apart or make it soggy.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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