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Dessert

Tarts and Puffs

A pastry tart filled with fruit, sugar, and lemon, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and lemon work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 623 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Tarts and Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Grease tin patties with butter and line with puff paste.

  3. Place fine sugar at the bottom of each patty.

  4. Add your chosen fruit, then sprinkle a little sugar on top.

  5. Pour 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and 3 teaspoons of the cooking liquid over each tart.

  6. Cover with a lid of puff paste and bake in the oven until golden.

Prepare the fruit

  1. For apples and pears, peel, core, and cut into quarters, then simmer in water with lemon peel until tender.

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. Plum + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together623 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Butter + plumtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together710 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 paste
Forms the flaky pastry base and lid that enclose the fruit.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out juices as the tart bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit.
Butter for greasing
Keeps the tin patties from sticking and adds richness to the pastry edges.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking at a moderate oven heat sets the pastry while the fruit softens. Undercooked pastry stays pale and soggy, so bake until the top is evenly golden.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Plumthe original

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