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Cheese-cakes, &C

A layered pastry with rhubarb, preserves, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Cheese-cakes, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Peel and cut the rhubarb into 2-inch pieces.

  2. Combine the rhubarb and sugar in a pot and boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then fill the tarts with it.

Make the pastry

  1. Make a light puff pastry with flour and butter.

  2. Roll the pastry out thick.

  3. Cut a round piece of paper the size of your serving dish.

  4. Shape the pastry by the paper.

  5. Nick a Vandyke pattern around the edges.

  6. Cut smaller rounds of paper.

  7. Repeat the nicking process five more times.

  8. Cut a round piece out of the middle of each smaller pastry.

  9. Bake the pastry pieces until light brown.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Layer the largest pastry in the dish.

  2. Top the pastry with preserved apples and syrup.

  3. Layer preserved raspberries on top.

  4. Layer green preserves on top.

  5. Layer jelly marmalade on top.

  6. Layer blackberries on top.

  7. Layer apricots on top.

  8. Layer a preserved orange shaped like a pineapple on top.

  9. Top with bay leaves.

  10. Decorate the plate's border with assorted preserves.

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 + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Rhubarb + orangetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Apricot + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Rhubarb + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the light puff pastry once baked.
Unsalted butter
Creates flaky layers in the pastry and adds richness.
Garden rhubarb
Provides tart acidity and bulk for the cooked filling.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the rhubarb and helps it set into a thick filling.

The step that matters

Bake the pastry pieces until light brown. Pastry needs enough oven time to dry and set into a crisp base; underbaked dough stays soft and doughy, while over-browning turns it bitter.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rhubarb, sugar, flour, butter, apple, apricot. 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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