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Crust for French Tarts, Rich
Crumble four ounces of butter into half a pound of flour, add a pinch of salt, a tea-spoonful of sifted sugar, and sufficient cold water to make it into a light paste. Roll it well three times, fold it each time, and touch it very lightly. The less handling it has the better it will be. Time, twenty minutes to prepare. Probable cost, 1s. per pound.
A half-fat pastry given the folding treatment of rough puff — the folds, not the fat, are what make it "rich" in texture. Everything depends on keeping the butter cold and the hands off it.
- The hinge: temperature"Crumble" means rubbing cold butter into flour until it is in flakes and small nuggets, not a uniform sand. If the butter softens the layers merge and the rolling and folding buys you nothing; chill the dough 20-30 minutes before rolling and again before baking.
- Weights in metric4 oz butter is about 115 g, half a pound of flour about 225 g. Cold water is usually 4-5 tablespoons (60-75 ml) — add it a spoonful at a time, since flour absorbency varies.
- "Roll it well three times, fold it each time"This is a rough puff turn: roll to a rectangle roughly three times as long as it is wide, fold in thirds like a letter, give it a quarter turn, repeat. Three turns gives a flaky, layered crust rather than a short crumbly one.
- FlourVictorian household flour was softer than modern strong bread flour. Plain all-purpose is right here; bread flour will make the dough elastic and hard to keep from shrinking.
- Sugar and salt"Sifted sugar" means sugar sifted free of lumps; caster or superfine is a reasonable modern equivalent. It is there chiefly to help the crust brown, with only a faint sweetness. Keep the pinch of salt even in a sweet tart.
- OvenThe recipe gives none. French tarts of this type want a hot oven, 400-425F (200-220C), to set the layers before the butter runs; drop to 350F (180C) if the filling needs longer than the crust.
- YieldEnough for one 9-inch tart shell with a little trimming, or six to eight small tartlets. "Time, twenty minutes" covers mixing and rolling only, and does not include chilling or baking.
- "Probable cost, 1s. per pound"This is the book's own estimate for the finished paste; butter would have been the costliest ingredient in it. It is of no use as a price today, but it shows the book expected readers to cost their pastry by the pound.
Cassell's appears to separate "French" tart crusts from plain English ones on the strength of the folding: the French method is often said to have borrowed the turns of pâte feuilletée to build layers. This one sits between the two orm,, but folded three times, which nineteenth-century books often called a rough or half puff paste and recommended for open fruit tarts where a full puff would overwhelm the filling. The insistence on light handling reflects a real constraint of the period kitchen: keeping the pastry and the workspace cool, with marble slabs where they could be had. The costing in shillings per pound is a standing feature of Cassell's, aimed at a mistress or cook budgeting a household rather than at a cook improvising.