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Icing for Fruit Pies and Tarts
Before putting the pie or tart in the oven, wet it all over with cold water, sprinkle fine white sugar thickly on it, and press this lightly with the hand.
A finishing technique rather than a dish: a sugar glaze applied to raw pastry that crisps into a thin crust in the oven. Two words in it mean something different now.
- "Icing" here is a glazeNothing is beaten, boiled or piped. In Victorian usage "icing" could cover a range of sugar finishes, including a dry-sugar crust like this one. Do not reach for royal icing or a confectioners' sugar wash.
- "Fine white sugar" means casterRead this as caster or superfine granulated sugar, not powdered/icing sugar, which contains cornstarch and will go pasty and dull. Ordinary granulated works but gives a coarser, more sparkling crust.
- Water, not eggPlain cold water is what makes this work: it dissolves just the surface of the sugar so it fuses into a sheet. An egg or milk wash browns and softens the sugar instead, which is a different finish altogether.
- Apply sparingly and pressPress it in -- The pressing is the hinge. The recipe says to sprinkle the sugar thickly and then press it lightly with the hand; sugar pressed into a damp surface stays put rather than rolling loose onto the sheet pan.
- Wet pastry, dry fillingDamp the pastry only, and only just before it goes in. Left to stand, the water softens the top crust and the sugar dissolves into a syrup that runs into the seams.
- Vents still matterVents -- If you are making a double-crust pie, cut any slits before wetting and sugaring, since damping and pressing the surface afterwards would disturb the finish.
Cassell's, first issued in parts in the 1870s and reissued for decades after, was written for households where sugar had recently become cheap: British duties on refined sugar were cut through the mid-nineteenth century and abolished in 1874, which is roughly when sprinkling it thickly over a pie lid stopped being extravagant. The technique long predates the price drop, though, and appears in earlier English recipe books as "iceing" a tart, sometimes with rosewater in place of water and sometimes finished with a salamander, the heated iron plate held over a dish to caramelise its surface before ovens could be trusted to do it evenly.