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Fig Tart
Slice some good figs, and put to them as much milk as will just cover them. Cover with a plate and set in a moderate oven to stew a little. Stir in a small piece of butter, and sugar to taste. Line some patty-pans with puff paste, fill them with the figs, cover with the dough, and bake in a hot oven for about fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s.
A simple covered tart of stewed figs in milk, written in the shorthand of a book that assumed a cook already knew how to handle puff paste. The one thing to get right is the filling: it must be thick and cool before it goes into the pastry, or the bottom crust will never crisp.
- Which figs"Good figs" in a British book of this period most likely means dried figs, sold pressed in blocks or strung, though fresh ones were also to be had. Dried figs will drink the milk and thicken; fresh figs will collapse into liquid and flood the pastry. If using fresh, cut the milk to a few spoonfuls.
- Oven temperaturesThe "moderate oven" for stewing the figs is about 350F (175C); the "hot oven" for baking is 425-450F (220-230C). Puff paste needs the higher heat to lift, so preheat properly and bake on a heated tray.
- Patty-pansThese are small individual tart or bun tins, roughly 2 1/2 to 3 inches across, not a large pie dish. A 12-hole bun tray or muffin tin stands in well. The recipe gives no quantities, so the number of tarts is left entirely to the cook.
- Butter and sugarNo quantities are given because the figs vary. For 1 lb of dried figs, about 1 oz of butter and 2 to 3 tablespoons of sugar is a sensible starting point; dried figs are already sweet, so taste before adding more.
- Cool the fillingHot fig mixture will melt the butter layers in the pastry before it reaches the oven and the base will turn to paste. Spread it out and let it go cold, or chill it.
- Sealing and ventingDamp the pastry rim, press the lid down firmly and cut a small slit in each top. Fruit stewed in milk gives off a lot of steam and unvented lids blow off or split at the seam.
- FinishingThe original says nothing about glazing, which was often left to the cook. A brush of milk or beaten egg and a dusting of sugar gives the browning modern eyes expect. Fifteen minutes is right for tarts this small; check that the underside is coloured before taking them out.
- Cost"Probable cost, 1s." is the shilling price for the whole batch, a running feature of Cassell's entries and a rough guide to whether a dish counted as everyday or extravagant.
Cassell's belongs to the great age of the encyclopaedic British household dictionary, when publishers sold cookery in alphabetical instalments to a middle class that increasingly cooked without an inherited apprenticeship, and the terse style here is a symptom of that: hundreds of entries, each squeezed to a few lines and priced in shillings. Dried figs were a staple of the Victorian store cupboard rather than a luxury, shipped in quantity from Turkey and Spain and cheap enough to appear in puddings and boiled dumplings as well as in tarts. Stewing dried fruit in milk rather than water was a common way to soften it and enrich it at once. The dish is best read as a thrifty use of the pantry: no eggs, no cream, no spice, and a filling that costs almost nothing beyond the pastry.