Name: Apricot Tart a LA Fran^aise
Ingredients: puff pastry; apricot jam; tinned or bottled apricots; syrup (equal weights of sugar and water); wine or liqueur; chopped green fruit or pistachios; colored fruit (e.g., cherries or pink pears); cream

Why it works: Apricot and pear match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 218 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Apricot Tart a LA Fran^aise

Ingredients

Directions

Roll out the puff pastry thinly and bake it in a round or oval tart tin.
Spread a thin layer of apricot jam over the baked pastry.
Arrange the apricot halves on top, alternating concave and convex sides.
Boil the syrup until thick, adding a little wine or liqueur to coat the fruit.
Fill the hollow parts of the apricots with chopped green fruit or pistachios.
Whip the cream until thick and add a dollop on the convex halves of the fruit just before serving.

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.

Apricot + peartop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together218 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).
Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Apricot + pistachiotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together188 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Pistachio + peartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together30 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Swap the pistachio

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, syrup, sugar, wine, pear, cream):

Hazelnutfits better
Chestnutfits about as well
Almondfits about as well
Pistachiothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, syrup, sugar, wine, pear, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.