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Fairy Fancies
For this pretty, fanciful pastry make first a good short crust (see CRUST, SHORT, COMMON). When very thinly and evenly rolled out, cut with a tin cutter, procured for the purpose, as many sheets of crust as are required for the foundation of the pastry, then, with a round tin cutter of about an inch in diameter, and another of half the size, make eight rings of crust, and carefully place two-one of each size, the largest at the bottom-on the four corners of the foundation previously formed. The rings should be brushed with white of egg to make them adhere. Bake in a slow oven, as the pastry should be of a pale tint. When cold, fill each of the four rounds with differently-coloured jams or jellies. The above may also be iced with sugar, or made of almond paste, and the rings coloured according to fancy, and filled with whipped cream.
FAM
A Victorian petit-four exercise rather than a dish: a thin square of shortcrust with four small pastry wells at the corners, filled after baking. The whole thing depends on the crust staying pale and flat.
- Slow ovenConventionally read as about 300F (150C). The instruction to keep the pastry "of a pale tint" is the point of the low heat; no time is given, so judge by colour rather than the clock.
- Reading the ringsThe eight rings are two per corner, and the recipe specifies one of each size with the largest at the bottom: a ring from the 1-inch cutter with a smaller one from the half-inch cutter set on top, building up the corner well. The "tin cutter, procured for the purpose" for the base is not described beyond the foundation having four corners; a square or fluted cutter of a few inches will serve.
- Short crust, commonThe cross-referenced crust would have been a plain flour-and-fat pastry bound with water and unsweetened; the exact proportions belong to the book's own entry, not given here. Any modern shortcrust rolled very thin, about 1/8 inch, serves.
- Egg white as glueBrush the rings with lightly beaten white only, not whole egg — yolk browns and the crust is meant to stay pale. Chill the assembled pieces before baking so the rings do not slide.
- Weight the baseThe recipe assumes a flat foundation. Prick the base all over, or the centre lifts and tips the corner wells; docking matters more here than in a tart with filling to hold it down.
- Fill cold, and fill lateJam or jelly goes in only when the pastry is completely cold, as the recipe directs, or it softens the shell. If using whipped cream, fill within an hour of serving.
- Almond paste variantThe almond-paste version behaves much like marzipan, and it colours and browns far faster than pastry. Watch it closely in the slow oven and expect it to set rather than crisp.
- YieldNo quantity is given. A dozen or so small pieces from 8 oz of flour is a reasonable guess; count them as tea-table fancies rather than a dessert course.
Fairy Fancies belongs to the late-Victorian fashion for "fancies" — tiny, ornamental, brightly coloured pastries set out at afternoon tea, where the display mattered as much as the eating. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, an enormous alphabetical compendium assembled for middle-class households — the Cassell's cookery dictionaries ran from the 1870s into the early twentieth century, and which edition lies behind this page is not established — is full of such items, and their inclusion says something about the period's ambitions: a cook was expected to own graded tin cutters and to produce, without a pastry chef, work that looked shop-bought. The name is decorative rather than descriptive, of a piece with the fairy cakes of the period, though fairy butter is older still, an eighteenth-century preparation found in Glasse; and the appeal lies in the four different jams glinting in their separate wells — colour was the luxury, at a time when clear jellies and tinted almond paste were the confectioner's chief means of display.