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Orange Tart
1 Cup Boiling Water 4 Tablespoons Cornstarch 1 Large, Juicy Orange 2-3 Cup Yellow Corn Syrup 1 Teaspoon Lemon Juice 3 Eggs Cook the cornstarch, made smooth with a little cold water, and the boiling water for five minutes. Add the pulp and part of the grated rind of the orange, the corn syrup and the lemon juice.
Heat thoroughly and pour slowly onto the beaten yolks of the eggs. Beat thoroughly. Pour into a tart crust, cover with meringue made from the whites of the eggs and flavored with lemon juice. Brown in oven. Serve cold.
A cornstarch-thickened citrus curd under meringue, closer in method to a lemon meringue pie than to a European tart. The recipe assumes a good deal of knowledge the modern cook should have spelled out.
- "2-3 Cup" corn syrupAlmost certainly two-thirds of a cup, the fraction having lost its slash: use 2/3 cup. Two to three cups of syrup in a single tart would be inedible.
- Blind-bake the shellThe filling goes in already cooked and only needs the meringue browned, so the crust must be fully baked and cooled first. Line and weight a 9-inch shell, bake at 400F until dry and golden, then cool.
- Cook the starch properlySlake the 4 tablespoons cornstarch in a few tablespoons of cold water, whisk into the boiling cup of water, and hold it at a bare simmer the full five minutes. Undercooked cornstarch tastes chalky and will weep under the meringue.
- Acid goes in after thickeningThe orange pulp and lemon juice are added once the starch has set, which happens to be the right order: acid breaks down cornstarch and a filling boiled hard after the juice goes in will slacken.
- Tempering the yolks"Pour slowly onto the beaten yolks" means in a thin stream while whisking constantly, then return the mixture to the pan and cook two or three minutes more over low heat to thicken and to bring the yolks up to temperature. Dumping the hot starch in at once gives you scrambled egg.
- "Brown in oven"Beat the three whites to firm, glossy peaks with 6 tablespoons sugar — the original omits sugar for the meringue, but an unsweetened one will not hold. Spread it so it seals to the crust edge all around and bake at 350F for 12 to 15 minutes.
- Serve cold, but not chilled longThe quantities suit roughly a 9-inch tart, six to eight servings. Cool at room temperature; meringue pies held overnight in the refrigerator bead and shrink.
Corn syrup in a fruit tart marks this as an early twentieth-century American recipe: commercial glucose syrup manufacture was well established in the United States by the nineteenth century, and the heavy promotion of corn syrup for home baking is generally traced to the early 1900s, when it was sold as cheaper and less likely to crystallize than sugar. The yellow, or light-brown, grade called for here carries more flavor than the near-colorless kind now standard on supermarket shelves. The meringue-topped, starch-thickened pie was a showy but forgiving dessert — the technique is a single pattern, boiled starch plus tempered yolks plus egg-white topping, adapted to whatever fruit was cheap.