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Dessert

A Sweet Pasty

A pastry filled with apples, almonds, citrus, marrow, sugar, cinnamon, and brandy, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

A Sweet Pasty

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 the filling

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the clarified butter until smooth.

  3. Mix in the minced apples, chopped almonds, citron, orange peel, fresh marrow, sugar, cinnamon, and brandy until well combined.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a baking dish with puff paste, pour in the mixture, and cover with more puff paste.

  2. Bake until golden brown, then remove from the oven and serve on a napkin.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Clarified butter
Provides fat and richness, giving the filling a smooth, tender texture.
Apples
Add moisture and fruity flavour that softens as the pasty bakes.
Sweet almonds
Add nutty flavour and a rich, slightly firm texture to the filling.
Fresh marrow
Adds richness and fat, contributing a silky body to the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour that deepens the taste of the fruit and spices.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The puff paste needs a hot oven to rise and brown properly. Underbaking leaves the pastry pale and doughy, while overbaking dries the moist apple filling.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, almond, orange, sugar, cinnamon, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, almond, orange, sugar, cinnamon, brandy. 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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