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Apple Cream Tartlets

Apple cream tartlets are pastry shells filled with chilled apple pulp and thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Apple Cream Tartlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shells

  1. Make tartlet shells from puff pastry.

  2. Let the shells cool.

Make the filling

  1. Rub apple pulp through a sieve.

  2. Add sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Dissolve gelatine in milk.

  5. Stir the gelatine mixture into the apple mixture.

  6. Whisk cream until stiff.

  7. Gently mix the stiff cream with the apple mixture.

Fill and serve

  1. When the mixture begins to set, fill the pastry cases.

  2. Garnish with glace cherries.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apple pulp
Provides the main fruit flavour and body of the filling.
Thick cream
Whipped to stiffness, it gives the filling a light, airy, creamy texture.
Gelatine
Sets the apple and cream mixture so it holds its shape in the cases.
Sugar
Sweetens the tart apple pulp and balances its acidity.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the apple flavour.

The step that matters

Fill the cases as the mixture begins to set. Gelatine sets as it cools, so if the mixture is still runny it will leak out of the shells, and if it is fully set it will not fill them smoothly or fold in evenly with the cream. Timing the filling at the early setting stage keeps the texture light and the cases neat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, cream, sugar, milk. 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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