Tartlets
'Roll puff-paste one eighth of an inch thick; cut it into squares; turn the points together into the middle and press slightly to make them stay. Bake until thoroughly done; place a spoonful of jam in the center of each; cover the jam with meringue and brown the meringue in a quick oven.
By brushing the top of the paste with beaten egg diluted with one teaspoon of water a glazed appearance may be obtained.
A skeleton recipe of the kind common in early loose-leaf collections: it assumes you already know how to make puff paste and meringue, and gives no quantities, oven settings or yield. The points below fill in what the original leaves out.
- "Quick oven" means 425-450F"Quick oven" in period usage is roughly 400-450F. The recipe applies the term only to the final browning of the meringue and gives no heat for the first baking; baking the squares at about 425F for 15-20 minutes, then returning them for 3-5 minutes once the meringue is on, follows modern puff-pastry practice rather than anything the original states.
- No meringue proportions are givenUse the standard ratio: 2 tablespoons of caster sugar per egg white, beaten to stiff, glossy peaks. Two whites will top about a dozen tartlets. A brief hot browning leaves the interior soft rather than cooked through, so eat these the day they are made.
- The folded corners are the whole structureThe recipe gives no size for the squares, though something around 3 inches suits the method. Bring the four points to the centre and press just enough to hold. Press hard and the layers weld shut and cannot rise; the pastry should puff up around a shallow well that catches the jam.
- Keep the egg wash off the cut edgesThe diluted beaten egg gives the gloss, but any that runs down the sides glues the laminated edges together and stops the lift. Brush the top surface only.
- Jam goes on after bakingThe recipe is deliberate about this. Jam baked from the start boils, thins and runs out; adding a spoonful to the hot baked shell lets it warm and set without escaping. A thick preserve, not a jelly or a loose conserve, holds its place under the meringue best.
- Seal the meringue to the pastrySpread the meringue so it touches the pastry all round the well. Meringue left floating on the jam alone slides off as it browns.
- Puff pasteMade from scratch when this was written; all-butter frozen puff pastry is a legitimate substitute here, rolled to the specified one-eighth inch. Chill the cut squares for 20 minutes before baking so the butter is firm going into the oven.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; a bought sheet of puff pastry rolled thin will cut into roughly a dozen squares, depending on the size chosen.
Tartlets like these belong to a long English tradition of small jam pastries, and the folded-corner shape belongs to the same family as turnovers and other folded pastries. What dates the recipe most clearly is its brevity: the compiler assumed a cook who already had puff paste and meringue in hand and saw no need to repeat basics. The finishing touch of egg wash thinned with water for gloss was long-established pastry practice before this book recorded it.