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Dessert

Damson Tart

A tart filled with ripe damsons and sugar, topped with a crust and glazed with beaten egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Damson Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a pie dish with the pie crust.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill the dish with ripe damsons and sweeten generously.

  2. Cover with another layer of crust and bake until golden.

Glaze

  1. Brush the top with the beaten egg and return to the oven for 1 minute to glaze.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Ripe damsons
Provide the tart fruit filling and its juices, which give the tart its main flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharp flavour of the damsons.
Pie crust
Forms the structure that holds the filling and bakes to a crisp, golden shell.
Egg
Browns and sets on the surface, giving the top a glossy, golden finish.

“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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