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Apple Tart or Cake
Line a shallow pie-dish with good puff paste. Make a mixture consisting of two pounds of apples pared, cored, and chopped, the peel of two lemons grated, a piece of butter the size of a large egg, four eggs well beaten, and a cupful of cream or new milk, and sugar according to taste. Mix these ingredients thoroughly. Put them on the paste, leaving a narrow rim all round. Blanch a few almonds, cut them into long strips, place them over the top of the apples, and bake in a quick oven. Care should be taken that the almonds are not too much baked. Time, three-quarters of an hour. Sufficient for three medium-sized dishes. Probable cost, 2s. 6d
A custard-bound apple tart rather than a covered pie, and the quantities are for three dishes, not one. Read the yield line before you shop.
- Scale it downTwo pounds of apples, four eggs and a cupful of cream are "sufficient for three medium-sized dishes" in the original. For a single 9-inch shallow tart, use roughly a third: about 11 oz apples, 1 large egg plus a little extra yolk, and 3 fl oz cream.
- Oven temperatureA "quick oven" is generally reckoned at somewhere around 400-450F (200-230C). That suits the puff pastry but not a cream-and-egg filling held there for 45 minutes. Start hot for the first 15 minutes to set the pastry, then drop to 350F (175C) for the remainder, until the custard is just set with a slight wobble at the centre.
- The almondsThe warning in the text is the hinge of the recipe. Blanched almond strips scorch and turn bitter long before a 45-minute bake is done. Scatter them over only for the last 10-15 minutes, or lay a sheet of foil loosely over the top once they colour.
- Butter the size of a large eggAbout 2 oz (55 g) for the full three-tart quantity, so under 1 oz for a single tart. Melt it before mixing so it disperses rather than sitting in lumps.
- A cupful, and new milkA Victorian cupful is generally taken as a half-pint, around 8-10 fl oz; the recipe is not precise and the filling tolerates some variation. "New milk" is simply fresh whole milk, unskimmed, straight from that morning's supply.
- Chop the apples finelyRaw chopped apple set in custard for three-quarters of an hour can still be firm at the centre of the pieces. Chop no larger than 1/4 inch, or soften the apple briefly in butter and cool it before mixing, or the tart sets around crunchy fruit.
- Pastry and the narrow rimPuff paste under a wet filling goes soggy. Chill the lined dish hard before filling, and consider baking the case blind for 10 minutes. The "narrow rim all round" is the raised border that keeps the custard from running over the edge, so leave it standing proud.
- Lemon peelGrate only the yellow zest of the two lemons; the white pith beneath is bitter and there is a great deal of it on two whole fruit.
Cassell's places this among the general tart and cake entries of a dictionary compiled for middle-class households in the late nineteenth century. What is described here is closer to the older English tradition of the apple custard tart, in which chopped fruit is bound with eggs and cream, than to the covered fruit pie that came to dominate; it is a cousin of the apple charlottes and Chester puddings of the same period. The costing, 2s. 6d. for three dishes, is a feature of Cassell's throughout: the book was aimed at a mistress or cook who had to answer for the housekeeping money, and the price sits at the end of the entry like a receipt. Blanched almonds are strewn over the top by way of decoration.