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Dessert

French Plum Tart

A tart of plums cooked in a sugar syrup, encased in short pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Plum and wine work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 343 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

French Plum Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the plums

  1. Rinse the plums thoroughly.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the sugar with the wine or water until a thin syrup forms.

  3. Add the pitted plums to the syrup and cook until softened, but do not overcook.

  4. Remove the plums and continue boiling the syrup until it thickens enough to coat the fruit.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a tin plate with part of the pastry, add the plums, and cover with the remaining pastry.

  2. Crimp the edges, glaze, and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  3. Serve hot or cold, with cream if served cold.

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 + winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Plum + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 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

Plums
Provide the fruit filling and its tart, juicy flavour once softened in the syrup.
Lump sugar
Dissolves into the syrup, sweetening the fruit and thickening into a coating glaze when boiled down.
Short pastry
Forms the crisp, golden case and top crust that hold the plums in place.
Wine or water
Serves as the liquid that dissolves the sugar into a thin syrup for poaching the fruit.

The step that matters

Cook the plums until just softened. Overcooked plums break down and turn mushy, losing their shape in the tart. Removing them before they fall apart keeps the fruit intact, while boiling the syrup further lets it thicken into a glaze.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wine. 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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