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Apple Tartlets
Line some tartlet tins with Crisco pastry. Fill with stewed apples to which a little melted Crisco and grated nutmeg have been added. Cover with a meringue and brown in the oven for a few minutes.
A skeleton recipe of the promotional-cookbook type: it assumes you already know the pastry, the stewed apples and the meringue, and only tells you how to assemble them. Here is what it leaves out.
- Crisco pastryA shortcrust of the Crisco type runs roughly 2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 2/3 cup shortening and 4-5 tablespoons ice water; the book's own pastry recipe is given elsewhere and may differ in detail. Any all-shortening or butter shortcrust works; vegetable shortening gives the short, sandy texture the original intends.
- Crisco in the fillingA tablespoon of melted shortening stirred into the apples is pure product placement and adds nothing but gloss. Butter does the same job with better flavour, or leave it out entirely.
- Tartlet tinsPeriod tartlet tins were shallow, 2 to 3 inches across. A 12-cup muffin tin or individual tart moulds substitute directly; expect eight to twelve tartlets from the pastry quantity above.
- Blind bake firstThe recipe implies the shells go into the oven only long enough to brown meringue, which will leave raw pastry under wet fruit. Bake the lined tins at 400F for 12-15 minutes until set and pale gold, then fill.
- The stewed applesCook peeled, sliced tart apples with a little sugar and almost no water until thick enough to hold a spoon mark. A loose, watery filling will weep under the meringue and soften the crust.
- Meringue proportionsTwo egg whites beaten stiff with 4 tablespoons sugar cover a dozen small tartlets. Spread it so it touches the pastry rim all round, which anchors it and stops it shrinking away.
- Browning temperatureThe recipe says only "brown in the oven for a few minutes" and gives no temperature. A hot oven, 400-425F for 4-6 minutes, watched closely, will do it. A slower oven at 325F for 15-20 minutes dries the meringue through and is the safer choice if you are concerned about lightly cooked egg white.
- ServingMeringue-topped tartlets do not keep; they weep within a few hours. Cool them briefly and serve the same day.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil, cookery editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated shortening the company introduced in 1911. That explains the odd instruction to stir melted shortening into the apples: the book's recipes call for the product throughout, whether or not the dish needs it. The tartlets themselves are much older than the fat. Small pastry cases filled with fruit and capped with meringue were a familiar nineteenth-century sweet, and apple with nutmeg is a long-established English pairing.