Name: Apple Tarts
Ingredients: puff pastry; apples; sugar; lemon peel; water; cinnamon; syrup of cloves

Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Apple Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the apples

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Peel, core, and quarter the apples.
In a saucepan, combine the apples, lemon peel, a little water, and a stick of cinnamon.
Cover and cook over low heat until the apples are soft.
Sweeten with sugar and add syrup of cloves.
Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and let it cool.

Assemble and bake

Roll out the puff pastry and line a tart pan.
Fill the pastry with the apple mixture and cover with more pastry.
Bake for about 30 minutes until golden brown.

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.

Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,598 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).
Apple + clovetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,774 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,842 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,950 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry: Forms the flaky, golden crust that holds the filling.
Apples: Provide the bulk of the filling, cooking down to a soft purée.
Sugar: Sweetens the apple mixture and helps it brown in the oven.
Cinnamon: Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the apples.

The step that matters

Cooking the apples until soft and sieving them. The apples must be cooked fully soft so they purée smoothly through the sieve. Undercooked apple stays chunky and can release excess moisture, which may make the pastry soggy and the filling uneven.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, sugar, cinnamon, syrup, clove):

Vanillafits better
Pearfits better
Quincefits better
Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, cinnamon, syrup, clove. 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.