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Dessert

Ripe Fruit Tarts

A baked tart filled with mixed ripe fruit and sweetened with sugar, topped with tart pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and plum work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 255 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Ripe Fruit Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Wash and pick the fruit, then lay it in a dish with the center highest.

  2. Sprinkle the fruit with sugar and add a little water.

  3. Rub the edges of the dish with egg yolk.

Cover and bake

  1. Cover the fruit with tart paste, pressing the edges to seal.

  2. Cut a hole in the sides below the rim.

  3. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  4. Ten minutes before done, remove, ice the tart, and return to the oven to dry.

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. Currant + plumtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Tart paste
Forms the crust that encloses the fruit and holds in its juices while baking.
Moist or loaf sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice that forms a syrup around it.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the dish edges to help the paste seal and stick to the dish.
Mixed fruit
Provides the main filling, with flavour and juice that cook down under the crust.

The step that matters

Pressing the paste edges to seal. If the edges do not seal well against the dish, juice escapes and the filling can dry out or scorch. A tight seal keeps moisture in so the fruit cooks through in its own steam and syrup.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against plum, sugar, egg. 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.

More fruit tart recipes

Preserved 8 See all 31 →

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