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Dessert

Apple Tart

Apple Tart is a pastry dish with baked apples, sugar, spices, wine, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Apple 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Line a dish with puff pastry.

  3. Layer the apple pieces in the dish. Sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, cloves, and lemon peel.

  4. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  5. Pour the white wine over the apples.

  6. Cover the dish with puff pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. Remove the crust.

  3. Mix the butter and beaten eggs with the apples.

  4. Replace the crust.

  5. Serve hot or cold.

  6. Optionally add pounded almonds and a little lemon juice.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Baking apples
Provide the bulk of the filling and soften into tender pieces as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the apple filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples brown and caramelise slightly.
White wine
Adds moisture and acidity that flavours the apples as they cook.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that encloses the filling and browns to golden.

The step that matters

Mix the butter and beaten eggs with the apples. Eggs can scramble or curdle if added to hot fruit unevenly. Stirring them in thoroughly so they distribute through the apples lets the eggs set evenly as the tart bakes.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, clove, white wine):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Quincefits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, clove, white wine. 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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