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Jelly-Custard Tartlets
Dissolve two table-spoonfuls of strawberry or red currant jelly over the fire. Let it get quite cool, then mix with it gradually three well-beaten eggs. Three-parts fill some tartlet-tins, lined with puff paste, and bake in a quick oven for ten minutes. Probabel cost, 2d. each. Sufficient for half a dozen tartlets.
A three-ingredient baked custard tart, sweetened entirely by the jelly. The only real difficulty is keeping the eggs from scrambling when they meet the melted preserve.
- Cool the jelly firstThe instruction to let the dissolved jelly get "quite cool" before adding the eggs is the hinge of the recipe. Warm jelly will set the egg on contact and leave threads of cooked white in the filling; add the beaten eggs in a slow stream, whisking, once the jelly is no more than lukewarm.
- A quick ovenSomewhere around 400-450F (200-230C); the book gives no temperature and Victorian equivalences for "quick" vary. The high heat suits the puff paste more than the custard, which may be why the bake is only ten minutes.
- Puff pasteBought all-butter puff is a fair substitute. Roll it thin, cut rounds a little wider than the tins so the sides come up properly, and chill the lined tins for fifteen minutes before filling so the pastry does not slump.
- Tartlet tinsVictorian tartlet tins ran roughly 2 to 2.5 inches across and shallow. A 12-hole shallow bun tin is the closest modern equivalent; a deep muffin tin will hold too much filling for this quantity of egg.
- Three-parts fullWorth following as written: the custard rises in a hot oven and subsides as it cools, and a brim-full tin can overflow onto the pastry rim and glue the tart into the tin.
- Timing and donenessTen minutes suits small shallow tins. Look for a filling that is set at the edge with a faint tremble at the centre; carryover heat finishes it. Anything baked to a firm, dry middle will weep.
- Which jellyUse a clear, firm-set jelly rather than a jam with fruit in it. Red currant gives a sharper result than strawberry, and neither carries enough sugar for two tablespoons to sweeten three eggs heavily, so expect a mild, barely-sweet custard.
- Yield and costSix tartlets, as stated. The "2d. each" is a late-Victorian price, useful only as a reminder that these books costed every dish for the household accounts.
Cassell's arranges its dictionary alphabetically, which is why this entry is barely more than a ratio: jelly, eggs, paste. Small custard tartlets of this kind are usually traced back to the medieval and early modern daryole and its later English form, the darioles and cheesecakes baked in coffins of pastry, and by the nineteenth century such recipes were common in household manuals. What marks this one as Victorian is the use of a jar of preserve as both sweetener and flavouring: fruit jellies were made in quantity each summer, kept in the store cupboard, and drawn on all winter for sauces, glazes and fillings, so a cook could produce a hot pudding for six from the larder without touching fresh fruit. The costing in pence per tartlet was standard practice in Cassell's.