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Apple Tart, Open
Line a shallow tart-dish with puff paste. Spread over it smoothly apple-pulp flavoured and sweetened, about half an inch in thickness. Cut strips of pastry, twist them, and lay them in cross-bars over the tart. Bake in a good oven. Time to bake, about half an hour. Sufficient for four or five persons. Probable cost, 8d. for a small tart.
A lattice-topped open tart of the plainest Victorian sort, assuming a cook with cold apple pulp already in the larder. The instructions leave out everything a modern cook needs to know about the filling, so that is where the work is.
- "Apple-pulp"Cooked apple puree, thick enough to hold a shape on a spoon. Stew about 1 1/2 lb of peeled, cored cooking apples with a splash of water until collapsed, then drive off the moisture over low heat. Wet pulp will steam the base into sogginess.
- Flavoured and sweetenedThe book expects the cook to judge it: roughly 2-3 oz sugar per pound of apple, with lemon zest, a clove or two, or cinnamon. Taste the pulp before it goes into the case and adjust.
- "A good oven"Unquantified in the book. For puff paste it should be taken as a hot oven, somewhere around 425F, and it can be dropped to about 375F once the pastry has risen and coloured; puff paste needs an initial blast to lift, and too slack an oven tends to give flat, greasy layers.
- Shallow tart-dishAn 8-9 inch metal tart tin or pie plate. Metal conducts better than glass or ceramic, and a puff-paste base badly needs the heat from below.
- The latticeTwisted strips shrink and untwist as the butter melts unless the pastry is thoroughly chilled first. Cut the strips, twist them, lay them on, then rest the whole tart in the refrigerator for 20 minutes before it goes in the oven.
- Half an hourAccurate enough for a filling that is already cooked. Judge by the pastry: deep gold on the lattice and, more importantly, a crisp, dry underside when you lift an edge.
- CostEightpence is a period price note, not a measurement, and appears throughout Cassell's as a guide for household budgeting.
Cassell's belongs to the great Victorian dictionaries of cookery, arranged alphabetically and pitched at the middle-class household, which is why the entry assumes apple pulp is simply on hand rather than something to be made. The distinction it draws is an old English one: a covered tart or pie has a lid of pastry, while an open tart shows its filling, and the lattice of twisted strips is the compromise that lets some pastry sit on top without hiding the fruit. Stewed apple was among the cheapest sweet fillings a cook could reach for.