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Apple Tart
Apples Paste Cloves Sugar Peel, and slice some apples, and fill a tart dish of the size required. Sweeten to taste, and add a tablespoon of water, or two if the tart is large. Put in one or two cloves if the flavor is liked. Line the edges of the dish with paste one-third of an inch thick, put on a cover, and bake in a quick oven. When the crust is cooked, raise it carefully with a knife to see whether the apples are soft, and if not let the tart remain on the stove until the apples are sufficiently cooked.
This is an English-style deep dish apple pie with a top crust only, and the instructions assume a cook who already knows how to make pastry. Two details carry the dish: the pastry must be sealed to the rim, and the apples must be genuinely soft before the tart leaves the heat.
- "Paste" means pastryAny short or flaky pie pastry will do; the book expects you to have a working paste recipe elsewhere. One-third of an inch is thicker than most modern rolling — nearer 1/8 to 1/4 inch is easier to cook through, though a sturdier lid does hold up better over juicy fruit.
- Lining the edgesCut a narrow strip of pastry, dampen the rim of the dish and press the strip on, then lay the lid over it and pinch the two together. This is a seal, not decoration; without it the lid slides as the filling shrinks and the juice boils out.
- A quick ovenRoughly 400–425°F. If the crust is colouring faster than the fruit is softening, dropping the heat to about 350°F for the remainder is one way to finish it; the recipe itself gives no timings.
- "Remain on the stove"In a period range this meant leaving the tart in the falling heat of the oven or on the cooler part of the range top. In a modern oven, cover the crust loosely with foil and hold it at 325–350°F until a knife slips through the fruit with no resistance.
- Choosing applesUse a firm tart cooking variety — Bramley, Granny Smith, Northern Spy, Rhode Island Greening. Softer dessert apples collapse to sauce in the time the crust needs, which is not fatal but changes the dish.
- Sugar and water"Sweeten to taste" is roughly 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar for 2 lb of tart apples. The tablespoon of water is only there to start the steam; the fruit supplies the rest, so do not add more.
- ClovesOne or two whole cloves for a family-sized tart is plenty, and they should be fished out or noted for whoever finds them. Ground cloves at the same nominal quantity will overwhelm the apples.
- Dish and yieldA deep 8- or 9-inch pie dish with a good rim, filled generously since the fruit sinks. Serves six, with cream, custard or a hard sauce.
The covered fruit tart was one of the cheapest sweet courses a household could produce, needing only windfall apples, a little sugar and flour, and a substantial fruit dessert did the work of carrying out a light dinner. The clove is the older note here; whole cloves baked among apples appear in eighteenth-century English cookery, well before cinnamon became the default American apple spice.