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Filling (Melt piece of butter size)
Melt piece of butter size of walnut, and add: 1 cup brown sugar 1 cup currants 1 tablespoon lemon peel Yolk of 1 egg
A currant tart filling of the sort meant to be spooned into ready-made pastry shells; the book assumes you have already lined your pans from the pastry section. It gives no oven, no time and no yield, so all three have to be supplied.
- Butter "size of a walnut"A walnut-sized lump is about 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons, roughly 20 g.
- CurrantsThese are dried Zante currants, the small black raisin, not fresh red or black currants. Rinse and drain them if they are dusty, or plump them briefly in hot water and drain well before mixing.
- Lemon peelA tablespoon of "lemon peel" in a sweet filling of this kind may mean candied peel, chopped fine, or grated fresh rind; the recipe does not say. Fresh zest is much sharper, so use less if you go that way.
- The yolk is the binderOne yolk with no other liquid gives a stiff, almost paste-like filling that sets firm rather than runny. Mix it in after the butter and sugar have cooled a little so it does not scramble.
- Oven and timeThe recipe gives no oven or time, and does not in fact say the filling is baked. If baking in pastry shells, a hot oven of roughly 400-425F for 15 to 20 minutes, until the pastry edges are browned and the filling is just set at the centre, is a reasonable modern starting point. Bake on the lower rack so the bottoms crisp.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. The quantity makes roughly two cups of filling; how many shells that fills depends entirely on their size. Do not fill past two-thirds; the sugar boils up and cements the tarts to the pan.
- CoolingLet them cool in the tins for a few minutes before lifting, or the hot sugar filling will run. They firm up considerably as they cool.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company to promote Five Roses flour, and copies went out to Canadian households in enormous numbers in the first decades of the twentieth century; much of its content came from recipes sent in by women who used the flour. A filling like this one belongs to the family of Canadian sugar tarts that includes the butter tart: pastry shells filled with brown sugar bound by butter and egg, with dried fruit and peel added as the cook had them. Currants and candied lemon peel were pantry staples in a way fresh fruit was not, which is why so many tart fillings of the period read as variations on sugar, fat, egg and something dried.