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Tart, My Lady's
Mix a little pastry with six ounces of flour, a pinch of salt, three ounces of fresh butter, and as much cold water or milk as will make a smooth firm paste. Roll it out lightly two or three times, and the last time roll it to the thickness of a little less than an inch. Stamp it out with a fluted cutter the size of the dish in which it is to be served, and lay it on a floured baking-tin. Roll the trimmings of the pastry to the thickness of a quarter of an inch, and stamp this out in rounds the size of the flutings of a larger cutter. Moisten the edges slightly, lay the rounds upon the border of the tart, and press them upon the inner side, so that the outer edge may have a flaky appearance. Lastly, make a circular incision a quarter of an inch deep almost close to the border, and bake the tart in a moderate oven. When it is done enough take out with a sharp knife the part which has been marked, carefully scrape away the soft crummy centre, and fill the tart with good jam of any kind, or with oysters or lobsters prepared as for a vol-au-vent. Put the tart into the oven again for a minute, and serve it hot or cold. It may be ornamented according to fancy. If filled with sweetmeat, a few blanched and sliced almonds may be strewn over it, or the rounds of the border may be glazed with beaten egg. At Christmas-time the tart may be filled with hot mincemeat instead of jam. Time to bake, twenty-five to thirty minutes. Probable cost, exclusive of the interior, 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
This is a single large pastry case, hollowed out after baking and filled at the last moment — a shortcrust cousin of the vol-au-vent, meant to be filled sweet or savoury as the occasion requires. The hinge is the depth of the incision: score only a quarter-inch down, close to the border, or you cut through the base and lose the lid and the filling together.
- Quantities in modern termsSix ounces of flour is about 1⅓ cups; three ounces of butter is 6 tablespoons. That is a half-fat-to-flour shortcrust, not puff pastry — the flakiness here comes from the applied rounds on the rim, not from lamination.
- "Mix a little pastry"Read this as "make a little pastry." The phrasing is Cassell's compressed dictionary style, not a missing ingredient.
- A moderate ovenAround 350F, though a Victorian 'moderate' oven covered roughly 325 to 375F. At that heat a case nearly an inch thick will take the stated 25 to 30 minutes; check that the sides are set and pale gold before you attempt to lift the lid.
- Rest and chill before bakingThe paste is rolled out two or three times and then cut thick, which leaves it warm and elastic. Half an hour in the refrigerator before it goes in keeps the fluted edge from slumping and the applied rounds from sliding off.
- Scraping the centreDo this while the case is still warm — the crumb comes away cleanly then and sets hard as it cools. Leave a floor of about a quarter-inch so the base holds jam or sauce without leaking.
- Savoury fillings"Oysters or lobsters prepared as for a vol-au-vent" means the shellfish cooked and bound in a thick white or béchamel sauce, then spooned in hot. The minute back in the oven is only to warm the pastry; the filling must already be fully cooked, since it will not come up to temperature in that time.
- Cost and yieldSixpence for the case, exclusive of filling, is a period price and no guide now. It serves five or six, cut in wedges like a tart.
- AlmondsUse ordinary sweet almonds, blanched and slivered. Toast them lightly first if you want any flavour from them.
Cassell's built its New Dictionary of Cookery from thousands of short entries under alphabetical headings, and fanciful names like "My Lady's Tart" may well have helped distinguish one variation from the dozens of others crowded onto the same page. The construction \, then cut open and excavated to make a shell — is the economical domestic answer to the pâtissier's vol-au-vent, which required puff pastry, skill and time that a household cook might not readily command. The instruction that the same case may be filled with jam, with lobster in sauce, or with hot mincemeat at Christmas is characteristic of late Victorian household writing, where a single reliable technique was expected to serve the whole year: the shell is the recipe, and the contents are whatever the season and the larder allow.