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Dessert

Apple Tarts

Apple tarts made with orange rind, apples, sugar, and string paste crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,230 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Apple Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the orange rind

  1. Remove the yellow rind from the oranges.

  2. Boil the rind in 2 tablespoons of water until tender, then chop the rind finely.

Make the filling

  1. In the same water, simmer the apples until nearly done.

  2. Add sugar to taste.

  3. Add the juice and rind of the oranges.

  4. Continue boiling until the syrup thickens.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once cooled, fill small shallow pie dishes or tin patty pans with the mixture.

  2. Cover with string paste.

  3. If using pie dishes, ice the tarts before serving.

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. Orange + appletop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Apple + saucetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together965 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Apples
Cooked down to form the body of the sauce filling.
Oranges
Supply juice and rind that add tart, aromatic flavour to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the syrup thicken as it boils.

The step that matters

Continue boiling until the syrup thickens. Thickening depends on enough sugar and fruit pectin concentrating through boiling. Stopping too early leaves a runny filling that will soak into the crust, while over-boiling can make it stiff and sticky once cooled.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Pearfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sauce, sugar. 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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