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Chocolate Tarts
Grate two ounces of the best French chocolate, and mix with it a pinch of powdered cinnamon, a pinch of salt, a tea-spoonful of finely-chopped lemon-rind, a dessert-spoonful of sifted sugar, and a heaped tea-spoonful of ground rice. Mix a pint of cream or new milk with four well-beaten eggs, and add the custard gradually and smoothly to the chocolate powder. Stir the mixture over the fire for a few minutes, but be careful that the cream does not curdle. Line the inside of a tart-dish with good puff paste. Pour the cream, when cool, into it, and bake the tart in a moderate oven. Time to bake, about half an hour. Probable cost, 10d. made with milk, 2s. made with cream. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A baked chocolate custard in a puff-paste shell, thickened lightly with ground rice. Nothing here is difficult, but the custard is unforgiving of heat.
- The hinge: do not let the custard boilOnce the eggs go in, the mixture must be stirred over gentle heat only until it thickens slightly — a bare 180F/82C. The instruction to be "careful that the cream does not curdle" is the whole recipe. A heatproof bowl over simmering water gives more control than direct heat.
- "Best French chocolate"In this period this usually meant a sweetened eating or drinking chocolate, darker and less sweet than modern milk chocolate but probably not the unsweetened block. A good 60-70% dark chocolate, finely grated, is a reasonable modern match; taste before adding more sugar.
- A pintAn imperial pint, 20 fl oz or 570 ml. Using US pints will give you a noticeably thinner, less rich filling for the same four eggs.
- Ground riceFinely milled rice; modern rice flour is the nearest equivalent, though ground rice is traditionally a little coarser. It helps guard against curdling and sets the filling a little firmer; a heaped teaspoon in a pint is a very light hand, so do not substitute cornflour measure for measure and expect the same texture.
- Moderate oven350F/180C. For a custard filling, the lower end of moderate — 325-340F/165-170C — gives a smoother set and less risk of the eggs weeping.
- Blind-bake the caseThe recipe pours a wet filling straight onto raw puff paste. Line the dish, chill it, then bake blind with weights until dry and pale gold before filling, or the base will be sodden after half an hour under liquid custard.
- Lemon-rindChopped zest only, no pith. Modern practice is to steep the zest and cinnamon in the warm milk and strain it out, which gives cleaner flavour than leaving flecks of peel in a smooth chocolate custard.
- Doneness and yieldBake until the centre still trembles slightly; it firms as it cools. Serves five or six, as stated, and is best eaten the day it is made.
- The costings10d. with milk against 2s. with cream is a cost note for a Victorian housekeeper, not a preference. Whole milk works; single or whipping cream gives the richer version the price implies.
Cassell's was a household dictionary rather than a chef's book, and this entry shows its habits plainly: two versions of the same tart at two price points, with the cost per dish given in pence and shillings so a mistress or cook could decide what the table could bear. Chocolate itself had shifted by the late nineteenth century from an expensive drink to a manageable grocery item, helped by the Dutch press that removed much of the cocoa butter and by British firms selling grated and cake chocolate for kitchen use; "French chocolate" was a general mark of quality rather than a defined product. The cinnamon and lemon peel are older company for chocolate than the vanilla we now expect — Spanish and Italian chocolate was habitually spiced this way, and English cookery inherited the pairing. The ground rice belongs to the same practical instinct as the costings: a cheap starch that keeps an egg custard from splitting in a coal-fired oven of uncertain temperature.