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Dessert

Royal Apple Tart

A baked puff pastry tart layered with apple sauce, red currant jelly and boiled custard, topped with a pastry lattice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,104 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Royal Apple Tart

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

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

  2. Line a pie dish with puff paste and bake until golden brown.

  3. Prepare 1 pint of good thick apple sauce.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine 3 egg yolks and milk to make a boiled custard, sweetening to taste.

Assemble and finish

  1. Spread a layer of apple sauce on the baked pastry.

  2. Add a layer of red currant jelly on top of the apple sauce.

  3. Pour the cold custard over the jelly layer.

  4. Cut strips of baked pastry to the size of the tart and place them on top of the custard in a lattice pattern.

  5. Return the tart to the oven for 5 minutes.

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. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  2. Red currant + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

  5. Red currant + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together193 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Puff paste
Forms the crisp, golden base and lattice that hold the tart together.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard and add richness to the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that sets when cooled.
Apple sauce
Provides a soft, fruity layer that moistens the pastry beneath the custard.
Red currant jelly
Adds tart fruitiness and a glossy layer between the apple sauce and custard.

The step that matters

Boiled custard. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or scramble if overheated. Cooking gently and stirring keeps the custard smooth before it is cooled and poured.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

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