Apple Tart
Crust: 1 1/4 cups sifted pastry flour 1/4 cup oil 2 tablespoons cold water A few grains salt Filling: 1 quart pared, quartered, and cored apples Juice and grated yellow rind of 1/2 lemon 2/3 cup sugar A few grains salt Slice the apples into a basin in which they will be about one inch deep. Sprinkle the lemon juice and rind, the sugar, and the salt over the apples. Cover with the crust, and bake slowly from forty-five minutes to one hour. Serve with cream.
A single-crust deep-dish apple tart with an oil pastry rather than a butter or lard one. The whole thing hangs on baking it slowly enough that the apples cook through under the lid of pastry.
- Oil pastry behaves differentlyStir the oil and water into the flour and salt all at once and handle the dough as little as possible; it will not flake like a butter crust and toughens quickly if worked. Roll it between two sheets of waxed paper or parchment rather than on a floured board, since it tears and cannot be re-rolled well.
- "A quart" of applesThat is a volume measure of the already pared and quartered fruit, roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb, or about four medium apples. A firm cooking apple that holds its shape is best here, since there is no thickener at all in the filling.
- "Basin" means the baking dishUse a pie plate or shallow baking dish that lets the sliced apples sit about an inch deep, and no deeper. The depth is the point: a thicker layer will not cook through in the time given and will steam the underside of the crust.
- "Bake slowly"The recipe gives no temperature; in period usage a slow oven is generally taken as somewhere around 300-325F. The low heat lets the apples soften and give up their juice while the crust dries out rather than browning fast over raw fruit. Expect the full hour if the apples are firm.
- Vent the topThe recipe does not call for it, but it is worth cutting two or three slits in the crust before baking, since the apples release a good deal of steam that can lift the lid away from the filling.
- Lemon rind"Grated yellow rind" means the zest only, none of the white pith, which is bitter. Half a lemon gives roughly a teaspoon.
- Yield and servingServes about six. The cream is presumably pouring cream, unwhipped, poured over each portion at the table.