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Dessert

Amber Tartlets

Apple tartlets made with apples, sugar, margarine, flour, baking powder, and dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Amber Tartlets

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. Peel and core the apples, then place them in a saucepan with sugar and margarine.

  2. Cook the apples until they are mashed.

Make the pastry

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder, then work in the margarine or lard until it forms a paste.

  2. Add cold water as needed to form a dough.

  3. Roll out the dough and line patty pans with it.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill each lined pan with the apple mixture.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  3. Apple + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Cook down to a soft, mashed filling that sets the tartlet's body and sweetness.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the pastry its structure once water is added.
Margarine or lard
Coats flour particles to tenderise the pastry and keep it flaky and short.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the pastry rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Work the fat into the flour until it forms a paste. Coating flour with fat limits gluten formation, so the pastry stays tender rather than tough. Adding water gradually keeps the dough workable and prevents overmixing.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour. 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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