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Dessert

Crumble Tart

A baked tart of dates, pecans, eggs, and sugar, served cold with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Dates and pecans share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Crumble Tart

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix together the chopped dates, eggs, chopped pecans, baking powder, and sugar until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve cold in glasses topped with whipped cream.

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. Dates + pecanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Pecans + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the mixture brown lightly in the oven.
Chopped dates
Add moisture and natural sweetness to the filling.
Chopped pecans
Add texture and a nutty flavor.
Baking powder
Helps the mixture rise and turn lighter as it bakes.

Swap the dates

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Datesthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pecans, sugar, butter, cream. 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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