Tarts
Roll puff paste one-eighth inch thick. Shape with a fluted round cutter, first dipped in flour; with a smaller cutter remove centres from half the pieces, leaving rings one-half inch wide. Brush with cold water the larger pieces near the edge; fit on rings, pressing lightly. Chill thoroughly, and bake fifteen minutes in hot oven. By brushing tops of rings with beaten yolk of egg diluted with one teaspoonful water, they will have a glazed appearance. Cool, and fill with jam or jelly.
A puff-paste shell built from two stamped discs rather than a moulded case — essentially the vol-au-vent method scaled down to a jam tart. The technique is sound; only the oven language and a few assumptions need translating.
- "Hot oven"The book gives no thermometer readings; the term is conventionally glossed today as somewhere around 425-450F. Puff paste needs the initial blast to convert its water to steam and drive the layers apart; a moderate oven melts the butter out before the lift happens and gives you a flat, greasy biscuit.
- The chilling is the hinge"Chill thoroughly" is the instruction that decides whether this works. The rolled, cut and assembled shells should go into the refrigerator until the butter is firm — 30 minutes at least, and longer does no harm. Warm paste going into a hot oven will slump sideways and the rings will lean.
- Thickness and scaleOne-eighth inch is on the thin side, and deliberately so: the ring supplies the height. A 2 1/2 to 3 inch fluted cutter for the base and one an inch smaller for the centre gives the half-inch rim called for.
- Don't waste the centresThe small rounds punched from the rings can be baked alongside the tarts and used as lids, if you want a covered tart; being single thickness they may colour sooner, so watch them. Chill them with the rest.
- Water, not egg, as the glueCold water brushed near the edge is enough to bond the ring. Egg wash used as glue runs down the cut sides, seals the layers together and stops them rising — which is also why the yolk glaze goes on the top of the ring only.
- The glazeOne yolk beaten with a teaspoon of water is plenty for two dozen tarts. Apply it with a light hand and keep it off the cut edges.
- Fill coldJam or jelly goes in after the shells have cooled completely. Filled hot, the paste steams from underneath and softens within minutes. Warm the jam slightly to make it spoonable, then let the tarts set.
- YieldNot given. A pound of puff paste rolled to this thickness will make roughly eighteen to twenty-four tarts of 2½ inches, depending on how efficiently you cut and how many times you re-roll the scraps — and re-rolled puff should be stacked, not balled, to keep the layers.
The build described here is the *vol-au-vent* method in miniature: a base disc with a stamped ring set on top, so the sides rise while the floor stays flat and holds filling. French pastry cooks of the nineteenth century made these full-sized for savoury ragoûts; the small sweet version, filled after baking with jam or jelly, is often said to have been a staple of the English and American tea table. Fannie Farmer places it in the book's pastry section, which gives the paste recipe separately and then puts it to work in a series of shapes, of which this is among the simplest. The egg-yolk glaze diluted with water is a standard nineteenth-century *dorure*, thinned so it colours without setting into a rubbery skin.