Name: Strawberry Tarts
Ingredients: 1 ten-inch pastry pan; butter for greasing; plum or cherry pits or dry corn for baking; thick syrup for basting; fresh strawberries; additional strawberries for steeping in syrup

Why it works: Butter and plum work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 710 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Strawberry Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

1 ten-inch pastry pan
butter for greasing
plum or cherry pits or dry corn for baking
thick syrup for basting
fresh strawberries
additional strawberries for steeping in syrup

Directions

Butter and line a ten-inch pastry pan with tart paste.
Line the paste with a buttered strip of paper and fill with plum or cherry pits or dry corn.
Bake as you would a pie.
Remove the pits and paper, then baste the paste with thick syrup and dry in the oven.
Let cool and fill with fresh strawberries.
Steep more strawberries in thick syrup for two hours, then strain.
Mask the tart with this syrup and serve.

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.

Butter + plumtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together710 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Plum + syruptop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together143 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + syruptop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,796 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).