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Two Eggs (Four ounces of Butter)
Four ounces of Butter.
Two ounces of dried Cherries.
Four ounces of castor Sugar.
Half an ounce of Cornflour.
Two ounces of crushed Sponge Cakes.
Two ounces of Lemon Peel.
Beat the butter and sugar to a cream, add the yolks of eggs one at a time. Chop the cherries and peel very small, and add to the mixture with the powdered sponge cakes. Line the tartlet moulds with puff paste trimmings. Whisk the whites of eggs to a stiff froth and stir in carefully to the mixture; fill the lined moulds three parts full, dust them with sugar, place them on a tin, and bake them in a moderate oven.
A creamed-butter tartlet filling, close in construction to a frangipane but bound with sponge crumbs instead of ground almonds. The original assumes you already have puff paste trimmings and eggs on the counter; the title supplies the egg count the ingredient list omits.
- The eggsTwo eggs, separated, as the title indicates — yolks beaten into the creamed butter and sugar, whites whisked and folded in last. Nothing in the ingredient list says so.
- The missing cornflourThe half ounce of cornflour never reappears in the method. Sift it with the crushed sponge cakes and add the two together; it presumably serves to steady the mixture against the moisture from the fruit and peel.
- Weights4 oz butter is 115 g (one US stick), 4 oz castor sugar about 115 g, 2 oz each of cherries, peel and sponge crumbs about 55 g. Castor sugar is superfine sugar; ordinary granulated will cream, but less smoothly.
- Dried cherries and lemon peel"Dried Cherries" here most likely means preserved or candied (glacé) cherries rather than the modern dried sour cherry, though the term is not certain. "Two ounces of Lemon Peel" is a weight of candied peel, not zest from two lemons.
- Crushed sponge cakesStale trifle sponges or plain sponge cake, dried out and rolled to crumbs. Dry breadcrumbs are too savoury; a plain madeira cake crumbed fine is the nearest substitute.
- Moderate oven"Moderate oven" is usually taken as about 350-375F / 180-190C. Small tartlets of this size will take roughly 18-22 minutes - set at the centre and the pastry coloured underneath.
- Three parts fullThe filling rises on the whipped whites and then settles. Filling much beyond three-quarters gives you a dome that cracks and overflows the pastry rim.
- YieldAbout twelve to sixteen tartlets in standard patty tins, depending on how thin the trimmings roll.
Recipes of this kind belong to the tail end of the long British tradition of the sweet "cheesecake" tartlet - a rich creamed filling baked in a small puff-paste case, of which the Richmond maid of honour is the best-known survivor. Ground almonds were a common binder; here crushed sponge cake does the work instead, using stale cake and the pastry trimmings left from larger work.