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Dessert

Tarts Ajw Puffs

A fruit tart with a buttery crust, fine sugar, and lemon zest, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Tarts Ajw Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Grease the bottoms of tin patties with butter.

  3. Place a thin layer of crust in the patties.

  4. Cut apples and pears into quarters and remove the cores.

  5. Simmer the fruit in a saucepan with just enough water to cover until tender, adding a piece of lemon peel.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add fine sugar at the bottom, then layer in your fruit.

  2. Sprinkle more sugar on top of the fruit.

  3. Pour 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and 3 teaspoons of the cooking liquid over each tart.

  4. Cover with the lid and bake in the oven until done.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Fruit
Provides the main filling, with its natural sweetness and tartness shaping the flavour.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps draw out juices as the fruit bakes.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit.
Butter
Greases the patties so the tartlets release cleanly and the crust browns evenly.

The step that matters

Simmering the apples and pears until tender. Hard fruit must be fully softened before baking, because the short oven time will not cook it through. Using just enough water keeps the liquid concentrated so it can be spooned over the tarts.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, lemon. 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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