Name: Apricot Tart
Ingredients: 1 tin of apricots; sugar to taste; short crust pastry

Why it works: Apricot and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,630 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Apricot Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

1 tin of apricots
sugar to taste
short crust pastry

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Place the apricots in a pie dish and sprinkle with sugar.
Half fill the dish with the syrup from the tin.

Bake

Cover with short crust pastry.
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes until the pastry has risen and set.
Brush the pastry lightly with cold water and sprinkle with caster sugar.
Return to the oven to finish baking.

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.

Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apricots: Provide the fruit filling and its sweet, tangy flavour.
Short crust pastry: Forms the crisp, golden case that holds the fruit and syrup.
Sugar: Sweetens the apricots and helps the fruit's juices become syrupy.

“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.