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Dessert

Apple Tart

Apple Tart is a pastry filled with stewed apples flavored with sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the apples

  1. Peel and slice the apples.

  2. Stew the apples with water and sugar until soft.

  3. Add grated nutmeg, salt, lemon peel or extract, and cinnamon.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble the tarts

  1. Line small pie plates with the pastry.

  2. Fill the plates with stewed apples to a depth of half an inch.

  3. Roll out more pastry.

  4. Wet the pastry with the egg yolk mixed with milk and sugar.

  5. Cut the wet pastry into strips.

  6. Lay the strips in bars or diamonds across the tart.

  7. Trim the edges of the strips.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the pastry loosens from the dish.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Good tart apples
Provides the main filling, softening into a tender, flavourful body when stewed.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and, in the egg wash, helps the top pastry brown.
Rich pie or light puff paste
Forms the crisp, flaky structure that holds the apple filling.
Egg yolk
Mixed with milk, it gives the pastry strips a glossy, golden browned surface.
Ground cinnamon
Adds warm, aromatic spice that complements the stewed apples.

The step that matters

Let the stewed apples cool before filling. Hot filling melts the fat in the raw pastry before it bakes, so the base turns greasy and soggy instead of crisp and flaky.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, nutmeg, lemon, cinnamon, egg, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, nutmeg, lemon, cinnamon, egg, milk. 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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