Home › Pies and Pastry › Tarts-Gooseberry, Currant, Apple, or Any Other Fruit
Tarts-Gooseberry, Currant, Apple, or Any Other Fruit
Time to bake, from three-quarters to 1 hour. 1 quart gooseberries, rather more than 1/2 pound paste, moist sugar to taste. Cut off tops and tails from gooseberries, or pick currants from their stems, or pare and quarter the apples or peaches; put them into pie-dish with sugar, line edge of dish with paste, pour in a little water, put on cover, ornament edge of paste in the usual manner, and bake it in a brisk oven; fill with jam or other preserves.
This is a British deep-dish fruit tart: no bottom crust, just a strip of pastry around the rim of the dish to hold a lid. The method works for any firm, tart fruit.
- "Paste" means pastryA little over 1/2 pound of shortcrust or rough puff, roughly comparable to a sheet of shop-bought pastry. It is used only for the rim strip and the lid, so a single rolled circle is enough.
- Line the edge, not the dishWet the lip of the pie-dish, press on a 3/4-inch band of pastry, brush that band with water, then lay the lid over and seal. The band is what stops the lid sliding into the fruit as it collapses.
- Moist sugarA damp, soft unrefined sugar, closest today to light brown sugar. The recipe leaves the quantity to taste; gooseberries take a good deal, on the order of a cup to a quart of fruit, less for apples or peaches.
- A brisk ovenConventionally read as roughly 425-450F. Starting hot to set and colour the pastry and then dropping to about 350F for the remainder is a modern adaptation, not in the original. The recipe allows three-quarters of an hour to an hour; the longer time suits dense apple.
- A quart of gooseberriesAbout 1 1/4 pounds. "Tops and tails" are the stem and the dried flower end, both snipped off with scissors or the fingernails.
- Very little waterTwo tablespoons at most. Gooseberries and currants throw a great deal of juice, and extra water gives you a thin, weeping filling that lifts the lid.
- YieldA quart of fruit fills a 9-inch pie-dish and serves four to six. Cut a small vent in the lid, and stand the dish on a baking sheet to catch boil-over.