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Damson Tart
Line the edges of a tart-dish with a crust, puff or short, according to liking, and pile the dish high with damsons, laying a small cup in the bottom to prevent the juice running over; one pint and a half of damsons will require a quarter of a pound of fine moist sugar, and it should be equally placed amongst the fruit in the dish. If a short crust be made, send the dish to table with sifted sugar over the top, but if puff pastry is used, brush it over with cold water and sprinkle white sugar upon it before putting it in the oven. Time, half to three-quarters of an hour. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for five or six persons.
This is a deep-dish English fruit tart, not a lined pie: the pastry sits only on the rim of the dish and forms a lid over the fruit. A few of the instructions assume knowledge the book expects you already to have.
- The inverted cupThe "small cup" is set in the bottom of the dish, usually upside down. The recipe claims only one purpose for it: to keep the juice from running over. A ceramic pie funnel or pie bird is the later purpose-made equivalent.
- Line the edges onlyDamp the rim of the dish and press a strip of pastry onto it, then lay the lid on top and seal to that strip. There is no base crust, so the dish must be deep enough to hold the fruit heaped above the rim.
- Fine moist sugarVictorian "moist" sugar is a soft, only partly refined sugar, closest to today's light brown soft or golden caster sugar. The 4 oz called for is modest against 1.5 pints of damsons, which are sourer than most plums; taste and consider up to 6 oz.
- Quantity of fruitA pint and a half of damsons, measured by volume as the book intends, is roughly 1 lb 2 oz to 1 lb 4 oz of whole fruit. Distribute the sugar in layers as you pile, not all on top.
- The stonesDamsons cling to the stone, and the recipe says nothing about removing them, so they were left in; this is traditional, and the stones are often said to improve the flavour. Tell people at the table, or halve and stone the fruit first and expect a slightly wetter filling.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Puff pastry wants a hot oven, 425F, for the first 15 minutes to set the layers, then 350F for the rest; short crust can go the whole time at 375-400F. The stated half to three-quarters of an hour is realistic at those heats.
- GlazingWater and sugar on raw puff pastry, as directed, gives a crisp crackled top rather than the shine of an egg wash. Short crust is sugared after baking so the sugar stays dry and granular.
- Yield and costFive or six servings, as stated. The "1s." is a shilling in pre-decimal money, part of the book's habit of giving a probable cost for household budgeting.
The damson takes its name from Damascus, the fruit having reached western Europe as the prune damascene, and by the nineteenth century it was an English hedgerow and cottage-garden staple rather than a market luxury -- sharp raw, and at its best cooked. Its high acid and pectin made it the standard fruit for tarts, cheeses and preserves in northern counties, and Westmorland and Shropshire orchards are often said to have supplied dyers as well as kitchens. The construction here, pastry over heaped fruit in a deep dish with an inverted cup beneath, is the older English form of fruit pie, the purpose-made ceramic pie funnel being a later replacement for the cup. The entry belongs to a household expected to bake fruit in season and to know without being told how the oven should be managed.