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Dessert

A Sweet Pasty

A sweet pastry filled with apples, almonds, citron, orange peel, marrow, sugar, cinnamon, and brandy, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,514 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

A Sweet Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

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

  2. In a bowl, combine the minced apples, chopped almonds, citron, orange peel, and marrow.

  3. Add the pounded sugar, cinnamon, and brandy to the mixture and mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a baking dish with puff pastry and fill it with the mixture.

  2. Cover the top with more puff pastry.

  3. Bake until golden brown, then remove from the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Provide the bulk and moisture of the filling, softening as they bake.
Sweet almonds
Add richness and a nutty flavor that complements the fruit.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat to the filling, giving it a softer, moister texture.
Loaf sugar or brown sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the surface brown during baking.
Brandy
Adds aromatic flavor to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, layered crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Puff pastry relies on butter layers turning steam into lift in a hot oven. Removing it too early leaves the crust pale and doughy, while leaving it too long can scorch the sugar in the filling.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, orange, sugar, cinnamon, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, orange, sugar, cinnamon, brandy. 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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