Tarte Tatin

Created around the 1880s at the Hôtel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron, Sologne, by sisters Stéphanie and Caroline Tatin. The accepted story: Stéphanie overcooked the apples in butter and sugar, dropped a pastry round on top in a panic, and inverted the pan. The accidental-origin tale is likely apocryphal: inverted fruit tarts were an old Sologne specialty (Antonin Carême already described glazed apple-topped gâteaux renversés in 1841), and the sisters themselves called it tarte solognote, never publishing a recipe. The dish was named and popularized only after their deaths—by the gastronome Curnonsky in the 1920s and by Maxim's in Paris in the 1930s.

Lamotte-Beuvron 1880s, an accidental upside-down apple tart from the Tatin sisters' hotel — caramelized in butter and sugar, pastry on top, flipped to serve. Reine des Reinettes apples are the canonical choice.

Apples sit cut-side up under a thin lid of puff pastry, baked together in a heavy pan. Inverted onto a plate at service: dark amber caramel pools around the fruit, the pastry now underneath catching the syrup. Apples should hold their shape but yield to a fork. If the caramel is pale or runs clear, it wasn't taken far enough.

The cooking order is the trick: caramel and apples go in the pan first and reduce on the stovetop until the apples are half-cooked and the sugar is a deep mahogany; only then does the pastry go on and the whole thing goes to the oven. Reine des Reinettes or Belle de Boskoop hold up; soft eating apples turn to sauce.