Name: Fruit Tarts
Ingredients: short crust pastry; red currants; black currants; raspberries; powdered sugar; water

Why it works: Red currant and black currant share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 72 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Fruit Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Line small patty pans with short crust pastry.
Fill them with red currants, black currants, raspberries, or other fruit, heaping them high in the center.
Sprinkle powdered sugar on top.
Wet the edge of the pastry with water.
Cover with a layer of pastry about ⅛ inch thick.
Press the edges of the pastry together and trim excess with a sharp knife.
Press the pastry around the base of the fruit to form a cone shape.
Wash with water and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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.

Red currant + black curranttop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together72 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together393 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,156 recipes

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