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Puff-Paste Tartlets
Take half a pound of puff-paste and give it eight turns; roll it out to the thickness of a quarter of an inch. Dip a plain or fluted cutter, an inch and three-quarters in diameter, into hot water, and stamp out as many rounds as will be required. Gather the trimmings of the paste together, and roll it to the thickness of the sixth of an inch. Dip the cutter again in hot water, stamp out again the same number of rounds, and form them into rings, by pressing a smaller cutter, an inch in diameter, quite through them. Moisten the edges of the rounds, and lay the rings upon them to form the rims of the tartlets. Bake in a moderate oven, and whilst they are warm fill them with good jam. Place upon this a little ornament of pastry, made of the remnants. If the tartlets are wanted hot, put them into the oven for a minute before sending them to table. They are, however, generally served cold. Time to bake, ten to twelve minutes. Sufficient, a dozen for a dish.
A bouchée-style tartlet: a flat disc with a separate ring laid on top to make the wall, baked empty and filled with jam afterwards. Two details in the original need translating before you start.
- "Eight turns"This means eight roll-and-fold operations on the puff paste, not eight strokes of the pin. Modern practice gets the same result with six folds; if you are using bought all-butter puff, give it two extra turns of your own to tighten the layers, or use it as it comes.
- Oven heatVictorian "moderate" is usually taken as somewhere around 350F, though the terms were imprecise and varied between writers. Puff paste generally wants a hotter oven, 400-425F, to drive the steam that lifts the layers, which sits better with the ten-to-twelve-minute bake given at the end. Around 400F is a safe choice.
- Cutter sizesAn inch and three-quarters is about 45 mm; the inner cutter at one inch is about 25 mm. That leaves a rim roughly 10 mm wide.
- Dipping the cutter in hot waterA warm, wet blade is held to cut cleanly straight down through the laminations rather than dragging and sealing them. The recipe dips the cutter before stamping out each set of rounds; press down without twisting.
- ThicknessesA quarter of an inch (6 mm) for the bases, a sixth of an inch (4 mm) for the rings. The rings and ornaments are cut from the re-rolled trimmings, which rise less evenly than paste from the first rolling.
- Moistening the edgesThe recipe says only to moisten the edges of the rounds before laying the rings on; water is all that is called for, and no egg wash is mentioned anywhere in the original.
- Filling after bakingJam goes in warm, into an already-baked case. Filling before baking makes the sugar boil, run over the rim and weld the tartlet to the tray. A stiff, well-set jam holds its shape best.
- Yield and servingA dozen tartlets from half a pound (225 g) of paste, described as enough for one dish. If wanted hot, the recipe puts them back in the oven for a minute, only long enough to warm the pastry through; it notes they are generally served cold.
Puff paste built up in rings this way is the small-scale cousin of the vol-au-vent, and the method — a base disc with a separate collar laid on to give height — belongs to the French professional tradition that shaped much nineteenth-century English cookery writing. The same shells will take savoury or creamy fillings as readily as jam, and jam made a convenient filling for a household with a well-stocked preserve cupboard.