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Apple Creamed Tart
Make an ordinary apple tart, flavoured and sweetened. When baked, cut out the middle of the top, leaving merely a border all round. Let the apple become quite cold, and then pour a nicely-flavoured custard over it, and strew on the top a little pink sugar. Time, three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for half a dozen persons.
A Victorian dessert assembled in two stages: a baked double-crust apple tart, opened up and filled with cold custard. The only real technique is patience between the two.
- The hinge: everything must be coldThe recipe insists the apple be "quite cold" before the custard goes in; if it is still warm the custard is likely to thin and slide. Bake the tart, cut the lid out, and give it several hours to cool before filling.
- "An ordinary apple tart"In English usage of the period this generally means a dish of sliced cooking apples with sugar and a flavouring under a pastry lid, closer to an American double-crust pie than to an open French tart; the instruction to cut out the middle of the top confirms a covered tart. Roughly 2 lb of apples would serve six, though the recipe does not say.
- FlavouringThe recipe does not specify; lemon rind, a clove or two, or quince are all plausible period choices. Cinnamon works too.
- The custardA pouring custard, not a set baked one — egg yolks, sugar and milk or cream stirred over low heat until it coats the spoon, then cooled. Around 3/4 pint (a scant 2 cups) fills the well of an average tart. Do not let it boil or it will curdle.
- Pink sugarCaster sugar tinted with cochineal. Any red food colouring rubbed into granulated or caster sugar and dried gives the same effect; sanding sugar is the closest ready-made equivalent.
- Cutting the lidUse a small sharp knife and cut about an inch inside the rim while the tart is still slightly warm — the pastry lifts cleanly then and crumbles less once fully cold.
- Yield and costSix servings, as stated. The 1s. 6d. is the retail cost of the ingredients in late-Victorian Britain and is of historical interest only.
Cassell's belonged to a generation of large English cookery dictionaries that catalogued endless small variations on a handful of household staples, and the apple tart was among them. This one is a plain tart dressed up: the baked tart is opened, filled with custard and finished with coloured sugar so it can go to table as a distinct dessert. The pink sugar is characteristic of the period \insinsects, was the standard kitchen red before coal-tar dyes displaced it, and confectioners used it freely on creams, ices and sugars. The practice of serving cold custard poured over cold fruit and pastry, rather than baking the two together, keeps the crust distinct and is the same logic behind trifle.