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Ordinary Apple Tart
793. Pare, quarter, and core the apples, and fill a pie-dish up; put over them a heaped table-spoonful of sugar, with a little grated lemonpeel, or two cloves, or a little nutmeg. If the apples are mellow, add a table-spoonful of water; then put on a short crust of puff-paste, and bake nearly an hour. Or, wipe the outside of the apples, then pare, quarter, and core them, using the peel and the cores to boil with a little water till it tastes well; strain, and add a little sugar, and a bit of bruised cinnamon or cloves, whichever is preferred, and simmer again. In the mean time, place the apples in a dish, a paste being put round the edge; when one layer is in sprinkle on them half the sugar
A plain Victorian fruit tart: apples under a lid of pastry, sweetened and spiced to taste. The only real technique is managing the moisture and getting the pastry to set before the fruit collapses.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at 400F for the first 20 minutes to set and colour the pastry, then drop to 350F for the remainder. "Nearly an hour" is right for a deep dish of raw apple quarters.
- The pie-dishA Victorian pie-dish is a deep oval or round baking dish with a wide rim, and the rim matters: the pastry is anchored to it, with no bottom crust. A 9-inch deep pie plate or a 2-quart baking dish works.
- Fill it high"Fill a pie-dish up" implies heaping the fruit above the rim, since raw apples shrink appreciably as they bake. Underfilling leaves the crust suspended over a cavity.
- SugarA heaped tablespoon for a whole dish of apples is very restrained by modern taste, and assumes an old cooking apple. With supermarket Bramleys expect to want 3 to 4 tablespoons; with Granny Smith or Braeburn, 2 is plenty.
- "Mellow" applesMellow here means ripe and soft rather than hard and green. Note, however, that the recipe calls for the added tablespoon of water when the apples are mellow, not when they are firm.
- Short crust of puff-pastePeriod puff-paste was a butter-layered paste, though usually less highly worked than modern puff; "short" here suggests a thin, tender crust rather than a tall one. Ordinary shortcrust or a rough-puff is the closest modern equivalent; brushing with water and dusting with sugar before baking is a common period finish.
- The second methodThe variation makes a syrup from the peel and cores, which are comparatively rich in pectin and aroma. The passage breaks off before the syrup is used, but simmering, straining well, and pouring it over the layered fruit before the pastry goes on follows from the method.