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Dessert

Tarts, or Tartlets

A puff pastry tart filled with jam or marmalade and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Tarts, or Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

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

Assemble

  1. Line tart or tartlet pans with puff pastry, trimming the edges with a sharp knife.

  2. Fill the pastry with your choice of raspberry jam, apricot jam, orange marmalade, or stewed apple.

  3. Create fine strips of pastry to place across the top in your preferred design.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden, being careful not to over-brown the top.

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. Apricot + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Raspberry + apricottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together257 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Apricot + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raspberry + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together521 recipes

    Shared aroma: damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Its layered fat and water create flaky, crisp layers as it bakes.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness and fruity acidity, and its sugar helps the filling caramelise slightly.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour, and its sugar helps the filling caramelise slightly.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness and bitter citrus notes that balance the rich pastry.
Stewed apple
Adds moisture and mild sweetness, which softens into the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden, without over-browning the top. Puff pastry relies on steam from its butter to rise, and sugary jam darkens quickly. Browning too far can scorch the sugars and make the pastry bitter before it is fully cooked through.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raspberry, apricot, apple):

  1. Peachfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raspberry, apricot, apple. 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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