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Dessert

Open Apple Tart

A pastry case filled with apple marmalade, stewed apples, apricot jam, dried cherries, and apple jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and apricot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 777 recipes. Both carry gamma-undecalactone, which smells peach, sweet. The science ↓

Open Apple 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 the case

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

  2. Line a plain mold with short pastry.

  3. Brush the pastry with egg yolk and bake until golden.

Fill and serve

  1. Turn out the baked case and fill it half full with apple marmalade.

  2. Place whole stewed apples on top.

  3. Garnish with apricot jam and dried cherries.

  4. Surround the tart with pieces of apple jelly and apricot jam, 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.

  1. Apple + apricottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together777 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-undecalactone (peach, sweet).

  2. Egg + apricottop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,712 recipes

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

  3. Egg + appletop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Short paste
Forms the crisp, sturdy case that holds the filling.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the pastry, it enriches the surface and helps it turn golden as it bakes.
Apple marmalade
Provides a thick, sweet-tart apple layer that moistens the case and gives the tart its body.
Whole stewed apples
Adds soft, moist apple pieces and a fresh fruit texture on top of the marmalade.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and a glossy finish to the garnish.

The step that matters

Bake the pastry case until golden. The pastry must be fully baked before filling, because a raw or pale case stays soft and soggy once the moist apple layers are added. Egg yolk helps it brown evenly.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, apricot):

  1. Peachfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, apricot. 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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