A curious name for what sounds like a splendid dessert… I wrote yesterday about Eliza Acton’s pies, and this ‘tart’ comes in the same section. It sounds more like a pie to modern cooks as it has a pastry lid as well as being pastry underneath. She doesn’t explain why the pie has this name.
This is the intriguing filling – she gives the recipe using apples but at the end comments that peaches or apricots could be cooked in the same way, or cherries, not cooked but ‘merely rolled in fine sugar’:
Put into an enamelled stewpan, or a delicately clean saucepan, three-quarters of a pound of well-flavoured apples weighed after they are cored and pared; add to them three to four ounces of pounded sugar, an ounce and a half of butter cut small, and half a teaspoon of pounded cinnamon, or a light grated rind of a small lemon. let them stand over, or by the side of a gentle fire until they begin to soften, and toss them now and then to mingle the whole well but do not stir them with a spoon; they should all remain unbroken and rather firm. Turn them into a dish and let them become cold.
Eliza tells us to take six ounces of pastry and roll it out very thinly, put it on a floured baking tray and pile the fruit ‘in a dome’ in the middle and cover it ‘closely’ with another six ounces of pastry rolled out thinly.make sure the edges are well sealed then brush the pastry with beaten eg white (if you haven’t got a pastry brush use a small bunch of feathers!) sift a thick coating of sugar over it, and strew it with roughly chopped blanched almonds. Bake it in a moderate oven for 35-45 minutes… sounds pretty fine to me, Eliza!
Lois Elsden 