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Crust for Fruit Tarts
Mix a pinch of salt and two table-spoonfuls of sifted sugar with a pound of dry flour. Break six ounces of fresh butter into small pieces, crumble it into the flour, and work it into a smooth paste with a little new milk. Roll it out two or three times, and in doing so, add two ounces more of butter, and touch it with the hands as little as possible. Bake in a moderate oven. Time to prepare, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 9d. per pound.
A sweet shortcrust in the English style, enriched in two stages: most of the butter rubbed in, the rest folded through during rolling. The result sits between a plain paste and a rough puff.
- The hinge: keep it cold and barely handledThe instruction to touch it as little as possible is the whole recipe. Warm hands melt the butter into the flour and you lose both the flakiness from the folded-in butter and the short bite from the rubbed-in butter. Work quickly, and chill the dough at least 30 minutes before rolling out for the tart.
- Quantities in metricA pound of flour is about 450 g (roughly 3 1/2 cups); 6 oz butter is 170 g, the further 2 oz about 57 g. Two tablespoons of sifted sugar is about 25 g; spoon sizes were not standardised in this period, but the amount is not critical.
- "New milk"Unskimmed milk fresh from the dairy, not soured or separated. Whole milk is the direct equivalent. Add it a spoonful at a time; a pound of flour will take somewhere around 100–125 ml depending on the flour, and the paste should just come together rather than feel wet.
- Sifted sugarSugar passed through a sieve, usually after pounding loaf sugar to break it down; in practice probably closer to modern caster sugar than to icing sugar. Caster is a reasonable substitute.
- "Roll it out two or three times"Presumably roll, dot or scatter the reserved butter over, fold, and repeat; the recipe does not specify the fold. Effectively a shortened puff method. Rest the dough in the fridge between folds if the kitchen is warm or the butter will break through.
- A moderate ovenConventionally taken as about 350F / 175C. For a fruit tart with a wet filling you may want the first 15 minutes nearer 400F / 200C to set the base before dropping to moderate; the recipe itself gives no such instruction.
- YieldEnough for two 9-inch tarts, or one deep double-crust pie with trimmings. Unbaked, it freezes well for three months.
- "9d. per pound"Ninepence in pre-decimal currency, quoted as a guide for the household accounts rather than as an instruction. Cassell's gave costings throughout so a mistress could check her cook's spending.
Cassell's gives this as a general paste rather than tying it to a single dish, and a good sweet paste was a foundation a cook could use all season -- over gooseberries in May, currants and raspberries in July, apples from autumn through winter. The half-fat-to-flour ratio here is the standard English shortcrust proportion, and the trick of reserving a portion of the butter to be folded in during rolling is a domestic shortcut toward the laminated pastes of the French kitchen, giving some flakiness without the labour of a full puff. The costings in pence per pound that close so many Cassell's entries are a reminder of who the book was written for: not the cook alone, but the household manager checking the week's expenditure against the table.