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Dessert

Fruit Tarts

A baked tart filled with bottled fruit and a crust made from flour, tinned marrow, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Fruit Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling and paste

  1. Preheat oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Fill a tart dish with bottled fruit and add sugar to taste.

  3. In a bowl, combine flour and tinned marrow, then rub in 2 teaspoons of powdered sugar.

  4. If desired, add a little baking powder.

  5. Gradually add enough water to form a stiff paste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out the paste and cover the tart as usual.

  2. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the paste once mixed with water.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the paste to help it rise slightly while baking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the filling and the paste.

The step that matters

Gradually add enough water to form a stiff paste. Adding water slowly lets you stop once the dough holds together. Too much water or overworking develops gluten, which makes the pastry tough rather than short and crisp.

“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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