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Dessert

Apple Tartlets

Apple Tartlets are small pastry cups filled with apple marmalade and topped with pastry, baked and glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Apple Tartlets

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.

Prepare

  1. Roll out the tart pastry and cut out twenty circular pieces with a fluted cutter.

  2. Line the tartlet pans with the pastry pieces.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill each tartlet with a spoonful of apple marmalade.

  2. Cover each tartlet with a mosaic of pastry, then brush with egg wash.

  3. Place on a baking sheet and bake at 350°F (175°C) until light in color.

Finish

  1. Sprinkle fine sugar over the baked tartlets and use a salamander to give them a glossy finish.

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. Apricot + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Tart pastry
Forms the crisp, edible case that holds the filling and bakes to a golden shell.
Apple marmalade
Provides the sweet, set apple filling that fills each tartlet.

The step that matters

Baking until light in color. Pastry that is underbaked stays pale and doughy, while overbaking dries it and browns the edges before the filling sets. Watching color and timing keeps the shell crisp.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Plumfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, 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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