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Marmalade Tartlets
Marmalade Paste Make the recipe according to recipe for paste for tarts. Fill the tartlets with marmalade immediately they leave the oven.
A two-line recipe that assumes you already have the book's pastry recipe and know how to line small tins. The instructions worth spelling out are the ones it leaves unsaid.
- The hinge: bake the shells emptyThe tartlets are baked first and filled the moment they come out of the oven. Marmalade baked inside a small shell scorches at the edges and turns to hard candy; added hot to a hot shell, it slackens, spreads and sets as it cools.
- "Paste" means pastryThroughout books of this period paste is pie or tart dough, not a spread. The cross-reference is to the book's own paste for tarts, which is not reproduced here; any standard shortcrust or sweet pastry stands in.
- Tartlet tinsPeriod tartlet or patty pans run about 2 to 2 1/2 inches across and shallow. Line them with pastry rolled thin, about 1/8 inch, prick the bases, and chill before baking so the sides hold.
- Oven and blind bakingThe recipe gives no oven setting. A moderately hot oven, in the region of 400F for 12 to 15 minutes, will bake the shells dry and lightly coloured. Line with paper and beans or a second tin for the first 8 minutes if the sides slump.
- How much marmaladeThe original gives no quantity. Reckon roughly a rounded teaspoon per small tartlet, so about a cup of marmalade fills two dozen. Warming it briefly makes it easier to spoon level.
- YieldA batch of pastry using 2 cups flour lines about two dozen small tins. Eat them the day they are made; the shells soften once the marmalade has sat in them overnight.
Marmalade tartlets belong to a long line of thrift baking in which a jar from the store cupboard stands in for a cooked filling. The word marmalade comes from the Portuguese marmelada, a stiff quince paste, and shifted to mean the citrus preserve familiar today as Seville oranges became a staple of British and Scottish preserving. A preserve-filled pastry of this kind required no eggs, no cream and no time at the stove beyond the pastry itself.