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Dessert

Creamed Apple Tart

A puff pastry tart with a centre filled with boiled custard, made with pared and cored apples, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Creamed Apple Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Prepare a puff crust according to your preferred recipe, omitting icing.

  2. Bake the crust and then cut out the middle, leaving a border around the dish.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the center with boiled custard.

  2. Grate a little nutmeg over the top.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  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 + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 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

Puff crust
Provides a flaky, crisp structure that holds the custard filling.
Pared and cored apples
Supply the fruit body and tartness that the rich custard balances.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and a soft, caramel-like depth to the fruit.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sugar and custard.
Boiled custard
Forms a smooth, creamy filling that adds moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Baking the crust before cutting out the middle. Puff pastry must be fully baked so its layers set and stay crisp. Cutting out the centre before it is fully set or cooled can tear or collapse the border, and the crust may soften once the custard is added.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, nutmeg. 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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