Name: Creamed Apple Tart
Ingredients: Puff crust; 2 lbs pared and cored apples; 4 oz moist sugar; ½ teaspoon minced lemon peel; 1 tablespoon lemon juice; 1 pint boiled custard; Nutmeg for grating

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Creamed Apple Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

Prepare a puff crust according to your preferred recipe, omitting any icing.
Bake the crust until golden, then cut out the center, leaving a border around the edge.

Assemble and serve

In a bowl, mix the apples with sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice.
Fill the baked crust with boiled custard.
Grate a little nutmeg over the top.
Serve the tart cold.

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.

Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,551 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together53,532 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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: Provide the fruit body and tart flavor that balance the sweet custard.
Moist sugar: Adds sweetness and moisture to the apples as they sit together.
Boiled custard: Forms the creamy filling that sets the tart's texture.
Puff crust: Gives a crisp, flaky base that holds the custard.