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Dessert

Apple Tart

A pastry dish with apples, sugar, spices, and wine, topped with puff pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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. Pare, core, and cut the apples into small pieces.

Assemble

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry and layer the apples.

  2. Sprinkle pounded sugar, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, cloves, and chopped lemon peel over the apples.

  3. Repeat layering apples and spices until the dish is full.

  4. Pour the white wine over the entire mixture.

  5. Cover with puff pastry and bake until golden.

Finish and serve

  1. Once done, raise the crust and stir in the butter and beaten eggs.

  2. Replace the crust and serve hot or cold.

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

Good baking apples
Form the bulk of the filling and soften into a tender, moist layer as they bake.
2 eggs
Beaten eggs stirred into the filling help bind and thicken it as it sets.
2 ounces fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a smoother, more rounded texture.
White wine
Adds liquid and acidity that moisten the apples and brighten the flavour.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juices from the apples.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Stirring in the butter and beaten eggs. Eggs can scramble or curdle if they meet a very hot filling without being evenly mixed in first. Lifting the crust to add them lets you combine them into the hot apples gradually and evenly, so the filling sets smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, lemon, white wine):

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Fennelfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, lemon, 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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