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For Mixture
3 apples 3/4 cupful prunes 4 tablespoonfuls sugar 1/2 lemon 1/2 cupful water 1 tablespoonful cakecrumbs For mixture, peel, core and slice apples, and wash prunes in lukewarm water. Put these into a small saucepan with sugar, grated lemon rind and cold water. Stew slowly until apples are soft. Then remove prunes, and take out stones. Cut prunes in small pieces and return them to apples and cool. For pastry, sift flours, sugar, salt, and spices into basin. Add Crisco and cut it into flour with knife until finely divided. Then rub together lightly with finger tips until as fine as breadcrumbs. While rubbing, keep lifting flour well up in basin so that air may mix with it and Crisco is not made too soft. Add lemon juice and sufficient water to make stiff paste. Divide into two equal pieces. Wet a dinner plate with cold water and leave it wet. Roll out one of the pieces rather thinly, and line plate with it. Sprinkle cakecrumbs over it, then spread on mixture. Roll out the other piece of pastry for a cover. Wet round the edge of the pastry; lay other piece of pastry on, and press edges well together. Trim round with knife or scissors, and mark neatly round the edges. Brush over top with a little water or beaten white of egg. Dredge with sugar, and bake in moderate oven forty-five minutes. Serve hot or cold. The tart may be covered with boiled frosting.
This is a plate tart -- a double-crust fruit pie baked on an ordinary dinner plate rather than in a pie dish. Note that the ingredient list covers only the filling; the pastry quantities were given elsewhere in the book, so you will need your own shortcrust proportions.
- The missing pastryThe list of ingredients accounts for the fruit mixture alone, yet the method calls for flours, sugar, salt, spices, Crisco, lemon juice and water. For a two-crust plate tart of this size, work from about 2 cups flour to 2/3 cup fat, a pinch of salt, and just enough liquid to bind. Any figure beyond that would be invention on our part.
- CriscoThis book was published to promote Crisco, then newly on the market. Modern vegetable shortening behaves the same way in pastry; butter or lard will give more flavour and slightly less tenderness. The instruction to lift the flour high in the basin serves both purposes the recipe names: it works air in and keeps the Crisco from softening.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F in modern terms; the book gives no temperatures. Forty-five minutes is reasonable for a tart with a pre-stewed filling; the crust should be set and lightly coloured all over, not just at the rim.
- The wet plateWetting the dinner plate and leaving it wet is deliberate, and is usually explained as keeping the bottom crust from sticking to an ungreased surface. An ordinary ovenproof plate or a shallow 9-inch pie plate works; do not use fine china or anything that has not been oven-tested, and never take it from oven to cold water.
- Cake crumbsThe tablespoon of cake crumbs scattered on the bottom crust absorbs fruit juice and keeps the pastry from going soft. Dry breadcrumbs or ground almonds do the same job.
- Prunes and stonesBuy pitted prunes and skip the removal step entirely; if using stone-in prunes, stew them as directed since they give up their pits far more easily once softened. Chop them small so the filling slices cleanly.
- Filling textureStew until the apples are soft and the liquid well reduced. A wet filling will steam the lid from beneath and leak at the crimp. Cool the mixture fully before it meets the pastry.
- YieldOne plate tart, six modest wedges. The suggested boiled frosting turns it into something closer to a cake; sugar dredged on the crust, as in the main method, suits it better hot.
A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and issued by Procter & Gamble to put Crisco into American kitchens after its 1911 introduction, which is why a hydrogenated shortening appears in a pastry where a British or older American cook would have reached for lard or butter. The dish itself is older than the book: baking a covered fruit tart on a plate rather than in a dish was a common thrift in British kitchens, giving a wide ratio of crust to filling from a small amount of fruit, and the plate pies still sold in parts of northern England are a related form. Pairing fresh apples with dried prunes is a winter economy -- prunes kept well in the store cupboard and brought sweetness, colour and body to apples that had spent months in a cellar.