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Black Currant Tart
Put a pint and a half of black currants and three ounces of brown sugar into a tart-dish, lay a deep saucer in the bottom to hold the juice, or it will run over and spoil the appearance of the tart; put a neat edging of paste round the dish, and also cover it over the top. Ornament according to taste, and bake in a brisk oven. When sent to table, powdered white sugar should be sprinkled thickly over the top. Time, three-quarters of an hour to bake. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A plain Victorian fruit tart: raw fruit, sugar and a pastry lid, with no thickener and no bottom crust. Two details carry the dish — the inverted saucer and the sweetening.
- The saucer is the hingeA deep saucer set in the bottom of the dish catches the juice the fruit throws off, so it does not boil up and run over the sides; the recipe's stated concern is the appearance of the tart. A china pie funnel is the later kitchen equivalent.
- A brisk ovenBrisk indicates a hot oven, somewhere around 400-425F (200-220C); the terms are approximate. At that heat for the full three-quarters of an hour the crust may darken before the end, so shield the edges once they colour, or drop the heat after the pastry has set.
- Quantity of fruitA pint and a half is a volume measure, roughly a pound (about 450-500g) of stripped blackcurrants. Strig them off the stalks with a fork through the tines; the little dried calyx at the tip need not be removed.
- Three ounces of sugar is thinBlackcurrants are very sharp, and 3 oz (85g) of brown sugar to this quantity of fruit is austere by modern taste; the recipe's own remedy is the thick dusting of white sugar at table. Modern palates will generally want more sugar in the dish.
- PasteThe recipe does not say which paste; a short or puff paste would both be usual for a fruit tart of this kind. Only an edging strip and a lid are used; there is no lined base, so this is a covered fruit dish rather than a pie in the American sense.
- The juiceWith no flour or cornflour among the fruit, the filling stays loose and syrupy under the lid. That is intended; serve it in a bowl with cream rather than trying to cut neat wedges.
- Sugaring at tableThe powdered white sugar goes on after baking, once the tart has stopped steaming, or it dissolves into a glaze. Caster or icing sugar both work.
- Cost and yieldOne shilling was the book's own household estimate and means nothing today. Five or six servings is realistic for a deep tart-dish, though the recipe gives no dish size.
Cassell's compiled its dictionary for middle-class English households at a time when blackcurrants were a standard garden bush rather than a shop fruit, cropping heavily in July and needing to be used quickly. Their sharpness and high pectin made them a favourite for tarts, jellies and the cordials given for sore throats — the fruit's reputation as a cold remedy long predates the discovery of vitamin C, which it happens to carry in unusual quantity. The construction here, with a pastry lid over raw fruit and no lower crust, is the ordinary English tart of the period; the inverted saucer standing in for a pie funnel is exactly the sort of frugal kitchen improvisation these dictionaries recorded as a matter of course. Blackcurrants remain far more familiar in Britain than in the United States, where cultivation was widely restricted for much of the twentieth century because the bushes host a rust disease affecting white pines.