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Dessert

Cherry Tart

A tart filled with cherries, red currants, and brown sugar, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and tea work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Cherry 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. In a bowl, combine the pitted cherries and red currants. Sweeten the fruit with brown sugar.

Assemble

  1. Pour the small tea-cup of water into the bottom of a tart dish.

  2. Add the sweetened fruit mixture on top of the water.

  3. Cover the dish with puff pastry, sealing the edges.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until the pastry is golden.

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. Red currant + teatop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Red currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Sugar + teatop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,204 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

Cherries
Provide the main fruit body and tart flavour that fills the dish.
Red currants
Add extra tartness and acidity that balances the sweetened fruit.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the fruit and adds a slightly caramel note to the juices.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, golden top crust that seals the fruit in the dish.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, tea. 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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