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Dessert

Apple Tart, Creamed

Apple tart filled with sliced apples, moist sugar, butter, and custard sauce, baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,147 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Apple Tart, Creamed

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

  2. Prepare the short crust and line a tart pan.

  3. Peel, core, and slice the apples.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange the apple slices in the tart shell.

  2. Sprinkle the moist sugar over the apples.

  3. Dot with butter.

  4. Pour custard sauce over the apples.

  5. Bake for 30-40 minutes until the apples are tender and the crust 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. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Provide the main body of the tart, softening as they bake to become tender.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the apples brown slightly as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and helping the crust brown.
Custard sauce
Forms a creamy, set layer over the apples as the tart bakes.
Short crust
Forms the tart shell that holds the filling and turns golden as it bakes.

The step that matters

Pour custard sauce over the apples. Custard is a liquid that sets as it heats, so it must be poured evenly over the apples before baking. Poured unevenly, it can leave pooled areas that set unevenly or spill, and the filling may not cohere cleanly.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, sauce. 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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