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Scotch Apple Tart
Pare and core apples and place in a crock in a slow oven with neither water nor sugar. When tender mix in Sultana raisins in proportion of one-fourth pound to each pound of apples. Place in baking-dish; sprinkle with grated lemon and sugar, cover with a sheet of pastry well pricked and bake quickly. Serve cold with milk.
A two-stage tart: the apples are dry-baked to concentrate them before they ever meet pastry, which is the whole point of the method. The instructions assume a cook who knows her pastry, so the gaps are in temperature and quantity rather than technique.
- The hinge: no water, no sugarBaking the pared apples dry in a crock drives off moisture and concentrates the flavour, so the finished tart is not watery under its lid of pastry. Resist adding liquid; any heavy ovenproof dish will serve. The recipe does not say whether the crock is lidded.
- "Slow oven" and "bake quickly"Slow is conventionally read as about 300F for the initial softening, perhaps three quarters of an hour to an hour depending on the variety. "Bake quickly" for the finished tart implies a hot oven, in the region of 425-450F, until the pastry is set and coloured.
- A crockA glazed earthenware jar or bean pot; the recipe does not specify a lid. Any heavy ovenproof dish substitutes; the mass matters more than the material because it keeps the apples from scorching at the edges.
- QuantitiesNothing is specified beyond the raisin ratio: 4 oz Sultanas per pound of apples. About 2 lb of apples (roughly six medium) and 8 oz raisins fills a 9-inch dish and serves six.
- Sultana raisinsRaisins from the seedless white sultana grape, sold as sultanas in Britain and generally as golden raisins in the United States. They are softer and milder than dark raisins.
- Grated lemonThis means the zest, grated from the outside of the peel without the white pith. One lemon is enough for 2 lb of apples. Sugar goes on at the same stage, to taste, since the apples were cooked without any.
- Pastry, well prickedA single top crust of shortcrust, pricked all over so steam escapes rather than lifting the lid off the fruit. There is no bottom crust; the fruit sits directly in the dish.
- Cooking applesUse a variety that breaks down, such as Bramley or a similar cooking apple. Firm eating apples are likelier to stay in obstinate chunks after an hour in a slow oven.
- Serve cold with milkCold plain milk poured over cold tart is what the recipe intends; it is not a misprint. Cream or a thin custard is the modern substitute if it sounds austere.
Apples baked dry in a crock, then sweetened and lidded with pastry, is a thrifty northern British method built around a fruit store rather than a market: the concentration the long slow cooking produces made even middling keeping apples worth eating in late winter. The Sultanas are the tell of a later, more commercial kitchen -- imported dried grapes from the eastern Mediterranean became cheap and universal in British households through the nineteenth century, and by the time this collection was compiled they were a pantry staple rather than a luxury. Naming a dish "Scotch" in an American or English fruit-cookery book of this period is often taken to suggest frugality and plainness rather than any documented Scottish origin, and the instruction to serve it cold with milk rather than hot with cream would fit that reading.