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Canterbury Tarts
1 cup each raisins and sugar 1 well beaten egg 1 crumbed soda cracker 2 tablespoons lemon juice grated lemon rind 1 recipe rich pastry dough Chop raisins, add sugar, egg, crumbs, lemon juice and rind, mixing well. Make shallow tarts with the rich pastry dough, fill the unbaked tart shells with the mixture. Bake in hot oven 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Brown a marshmallow on top of each tart just before removing from oven. Makes 10 tarts.
A raisin-and-lemon tart filling bound with cracker crumbs and egg, finished with a browned marshmallow. The whole thing bakes in twenty minutes, so the pastry and filling go into the oven together and the marshmallow goes on at the very end.
- OvenThe recipe gives its own number: 400F, which is what "hot oven" meant in this period. No conversion needed.
- Soda crackerA saltine or plain water cracker, crushed fine — a tablespoon or two of crumbs from one cracker. It is a binder and mild salt note, not a filler; dry breadcrumbs work in a pinch but absorb more liquid.
- Chopping the raisinsChop them by hand to a coarse mince rather than pulsing to paste. A food processor will turn a cup of raisins into a sticky ball that refuses to distribute through the egg and sugar.
- Rich pastry doughIn books of this era "rich" means a short crust with a high proportion of butter or lard, sometimes with an egg yolk. For ten shallow tarts you want roughly a double-crust quantity — about 2 cups of flour.
- Shallow tart shellsStandard muffin cups or 3-inch tartlet tins both work. Fill them only about three-quarters full: the egg lifts the filling as it sets and a brimming shell will boil over onto the pan.
- The marshmallowAdd it near the end of the bake and watch it: marshmallow browns very quickly at 400F and scorches soon after. One standard marshmallow per tart; a handful of miniatures browns more evenly.
- SweetnessA cup of sugar on top of a cup of raisins is very sweet by current taste, and the marshmallow adds more. The 2 tablespoons of lemon juice and the grated rind are the only thing holding it in balance — use the rind of a whole lemon and do not skip it.
- Yield and servingTen tarts, best eaten the day they are made. The marshmallow weeps and goes tacky overnight, and refrigerating it makes that worse.