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Dessert

Swedish Apple Tart

A tart made with apples, sugar, candied peel, almonds, and a buttery crust, finished with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Swedish Apple Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Blanch the almonds.

  2. Brown the almonds in the oven.

  3. Finely mince the candied peel and almonds.

  4. Cook the apples in the oven with sugar, water, and lemon juice until they become a pulp.

  5. Mix in the minced peel and almonds.

Make and bake the crust

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add sugar to the mixture.

  3. Mix with the yolk and a little water to form a stiff paste.

  4. Line a tart ring or cake tin with the paste.

  5. Bake the lined tin in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C).

  6. Place greased paper filled with rice next to the paste while baking.

  7. Once the crust is brown, remove the paper.

  8. Dust the crust with sugar.

  9. Return the crust to the oven to dry.

Assemble and finish

  1. Fill the crust with the apple mixture.

  2. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  3. Gradually add castor sugar to the egg whites.

  4. Cover the apple mixture with the meringue.

  5. Decorate the top and sides of the tart with meringue using a piping bag.

  6. Dust the tart with sugar.

  7. Return the tart to the oven to bake lightly.

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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Apples
Cook down to a pulp to form the soft, moist filling.
Flour
Forms the structure of the stiff pastry crust.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to make the crust tender and short.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the meringue topping.
Almonds
Browned and minced to add nutty aroma and texture to the filling.
Egg yolk
Binds the pastry dough into a stiff paste.

The step that matters

Return the tart to the oven to bake lightly. Meringue is mostly sugar and air; too much heat or time browns it quickly and can make it weep or turn tough, so it needs only a brief, gentle bake.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, almond, flour, butter, egg, lemon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, almond, flour, butter, egg, lemon. 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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