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Dessert

Apple and Quince Tart

A tart of sliced apples and quince, sweetened with sugar and butter, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and quince work together. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Apple and Quince Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Arrange the sliced apples at the bottom of a pie dish.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the quince slices with a little water, sugar, and butter. Cook over medium heat until the quince is tender.

  4. Spread the cooked quince over the apples in the pie dish.

  5. Add more sugar to sweeten the mixture and grate lemon rind on top.

Assemble and bake

  1. Dampen the edge of the dish and place a thin strip of puff pastry around it.

  2. Cover the tart with a flat piece of puff pastry, sealing the edges.

  3. Decorate the top with pastry leaves if desired and brush with egg.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until golden brown.

  5. Remove from the oven and serve.

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. Apple + quincetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Quince + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  4. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooking apples
Provide the bulk of the filling, softening during baking to a tender, moist layer.
Quince
Adds fragrance and firm texture when cooked down until tender.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw out flavour as the fruit cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the cooked quince, giving a smoother mouthfeel.
Rich puff pastry
Forms the flaky, layered crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the quince until tender. Quince is firm and astringent when raw; it must be cooked fully before going into the tart, or it stays hard and the filling turns out gritty and unpleasant.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, quince, sugar, butter. 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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