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Art Shells
Roll thin a quantity of plain or puff paste and cut it out with a glass or biscuit cutter. With a wineglass or a smaller cutter, remove the centers of two or three of these circles, and lay the rings thus made on the third, in this way building a little wall around the shell. Bake on a baking-pan in a quick oven. When these shells are used, no small pans are required. In using patty-pans, carefully line them with the crust, and bake quickly.
These pastry cases may be made the day before needed and may be filled with any kind of pie filling, or with preserves or jelly.
This is a method rather than a formula: a way of building free-standing pastry cases without tins, by stacking cut rings on a solid base. A few things the text assumes you already know.
- The nameLikely a misprint for "Tart Shells." What you are making is, in effect, a small vol-au-vent case.
- A quick oven425–450F. Puff paste needs the high heat to throw steam and lift the layers; a slack oven gives you a greasy, sunken wall.
- Cutters and glassesA tumbler or biscuit cutter of about 3 inches for the base, a wineglass of about 1.5 to 2 inches for the hole. That leaves a ring roughly half to three-quarters of an inch wide all round.
- Glue the ringsBrush the base and each ring lightly with water or beaten egg before stacking, and press only at the seam. Egg wash on the cut edges of puff paste will seal them and stop the layers rising.
- Keep it coldChill the assembled shells 20–30 minutes before baking. Warm puff paste slumps sideways instead of upward, and the wall goes lopsided.
- Dock the basePrick the centre circle several times with a fork so it stays low and the filling has somewhere to sit. The rings are what should rise.
- Patty-pansSmall tartlet tins or a shallow muffin tin. Line, prick the bottoms, and weight with beans or a second tin if you are using plain paste, which shrinks readily.
- Filling and timingBake 15-20 minutes for small shells, until dry through and evenly browned. As the recipe says, they may be made the day before — but fill them shortly before serving, as wet fillings such as jelly will soften the base.
The stacked-ring shell is a domestic shortcut to the French vol-au-vent and its smaller cousin the bouchée, cases of puff paste raised into a hollow wall and filled after baking — traditionally traced to early nineteenth-century Parisian pastry work and popularised in English-language cookery through the century that followed. What stands out here is the emphasis on doing without equipment: a tumbler and a wineglass stand in for the tinware. The closing note that the cases may be made the day before belongs to the same practical logic — pastry was the part of a dessert that could be got out of the way in advance, leaving only the preserves or jelly to be spooned in at the last minute.