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Cheese d'Artois
Ingredients.
Yolks of two Eggs.
White of one Egg.
Two ounces of Butter.
Three ounces of Parmesan Cheese, grated.
The book gives only the filling; the pastry, assembly and baking are assumed from the pattern of the other d'Artois recipes, where a filling is spread between two sheets of puff paste and baked. Here is what that means in a modern kitchen.
- What is missingThis entry lists a filling and nothing else. On the pattern of the other d'Artois recipes, the mixture is spread over one sheet of puff paste, a second sheet laid on top, the edges sealed, and the whole baked and cut into fingers. You will need puff pastry to go with it -- half a pound or so will take this quantity of filling -- and the book supplies no instruction for it here.
- The butter must be soft, not meltedThe hinge of the dish is the texture of the filling. Cream the 2 oz butter to an ointment, beat in the yolks and the single white, then fold in the cheese. Melted butter gives a greasy paste that runs out of the seams in the oven.
- ParmesanThree ounces is about 85 g, or roughly a cup and a half finely grated from a block. Pre-grated tubs are drier and saltier; if that is all you have, reduce slightly and add no further salt. Cayenne and white pepper are common in cheese savouries of this kind, but this entry does not call for them.
- OvenNo oven instruction is given. Puff pastry of this sort wants a hot oven, around 425F (220C), for 15-20 minutes, until well risen and coloured; too cool an oven will leave the layers sodden with butter.
- YieldThe book gives no yield. This much filling will cover a modest sheet of pastry and cut into a dozen or so small fingers. Cut while just warm with a serrated knife.
- ServingSavouries were served hot, immediately after the sweet and before dessert, in small portions. Left to stand they go leathery, so bake them while the previous course is being eaten.
The name is often connected with Artois, the northern French province, though it is also commonly linked to the Comte d'Artois, and the derivation is not settled; the d'Artois form -- two sheets of puff paste enclosing a filling, sealed and slashed -- is generally traced to French pâtisserie, where it is more often met sweet, filled with frangipane or apricot jam. British cookery books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries borrowed the shape for the savoury course, the short, sharply flavoured dish that closed a formal dinner in Britain in a way it never did in France. Parmesan, anchovy, soft roes and Cheddar ramekins all belong to that same slot on the menu: something salt to finish on, in deliberate contrast to the sweet that preceded it. That this book gives the filling and nothing else suggests something about its intended reader -- presumably a cook who already had puff paste in the larder and needed only to be told what to put between the sheets.