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Banana Tartlets

A baked pastry filled with banana and apricot jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Banana Tartlets

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pastry

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the flour to make a short paste.

  3. Stir in the ground almonds, sugar, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Mix the egg yolk with cold water and combine with the paste.

  5. Roll out the paste to ¼ inch thickness.

  6. Line eighteen patty tins with the paste.

Make the filling

  1. Peel and slice the bananas very thinly.

  2. In a pan, heat the apricot jam and water, then rub through a wire sieve.

  3. Add the banana slices to the jam and mix well.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the lined patty tins with the banana jam mixture.

  2. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Serve cold, garnished with whipped cream if desired.

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. Banana + apricottop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate (fruity).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + apricottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the short paste that holds the tartlet shape.
Butter
Coats flour particles to create a short, tender, crumbly pastry texture.
Ground almonds
Add richness and a tender crumb to the pastry.
Egg yolk
Enriches the pastry and helps bind the dough together.
Bananas
Provide the main fruit flavour and soft texture of the filling.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness, body and glossy binding to the banana filling.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter into the flour. Working butter in quickly keeps it in small cold pieces; if it softens and melts, the pastry turns greasy and tough instead of short and crumbly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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