Lemon Tarts
Fill tarts with Lemon Cream used for Lemon Pie, cooked in double boiler until thick.
This is a cross-reference rather than a standalone recipe: it assumes you already have the book's Lemon Pie filling and a batch of baked tart shells. The one change from the pie is method — the custard is cooked through over water before it goes into the pastry, not baked in it.
- What "tarts" means hereIn American books of this era a tart is generally a small pastry shell baked empty and filled afterward, in a patty pan or tartlet tin. The book gives no size or baking instruction for the shells here; bake them until dry and lightly coloured and cool them completely before filling.
- The double boiler is the hingeLemon cream is a starch-and-egg custard with a lot of acid in it. Over direct heat the eggs scramble and the acid can thin the starch; over simmering water the mixture comes up slowly and sets smooth. Keep the water below a hard boil and stir constantly.
- How thick is "thick"Cook until the cream coats the spoon and holds the track of a finger drawn through it. If the filling contains cornstarch or flour it needs a little longer at that stage to lose the raw-starch taste; if it is thickened with egg yolk alone, stop as soon as it mounds.
- Fill warm, not hotLet the cream cool for five minutes and stir it before spooning it in. Filling boiling-hot custard into cold pastry drives steam into the shell and softens the base.
- Assemble lateFilled tarts soften as they stand, so fill them shortly before serving. The cream can be made ahead, covered on the surface to stop a skin forming, and kept cold.
- FinishingTarts of this sort were often served with whipped cream, or with a meringue browned briefly in a hot oven, though this entry specifies no topping. A meringue on an already-cooked filling needs only enough time to colour.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907), written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company, was a promotional cookbook of the kind manufacturers issued in quantity in the early twentieth century — sound general recipes surrounding a core of chocolate work. Entries like this one show how such books were built to be used: rather than reprint the lemon cream a second time, the author points back to the pie and notes only what changes, a habit of economy often said to be shared with Fannie Farmer and the other Boston-school writers. Lemon cream itself is much older than the book, descending from the English lemon creams and cheeses of the eighteenth century, and the double boiler that appears here was one of the defining tools of the American cooking-school movement, promoted for exactly this kind of egg-thickened mixture where direct heat is unforgiving. Small filled tarts of this sort are generally associated with the tea table and the supper tray rather than the dinner dessert course.