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German Fruit Tart
Make a crust of one pint of flour and one heaping teaspoon of baking powder sifted together, a piece of butter as large as a walnut, one pinch of salt, one beaten egg and enough sweet milk to make a soft dough. Roll the crust one-half inch thick and cover the bottom and sides of a buttered bakingtin with it. Now cover the crust with quartered, juicy apples, sprinkle with a little cinnamon and molasses; bake in a rather quick oven till crust and apples are both a light brown; sprinkle over with sugar, keep in the oven five minutes more, and then serve.
Peaches may be used in place of apples if desired.
This is a biscuit-dough fruit tart rather than a pastry one, closer to a German Blechkuchen than to a pie. The dough is soft and forgiving, but it does need to go into a hot oven straight away or the baking powder is wasted.
- A pint of flourFlour was measured by volume: one pint is two cups, roughly 8 to 9 oz. "Heaping" was never an exact measure; the teaspoon of baking powder is perhaps 1 1/2 level teaspoons by modern reckoning.
- Butter as large as a walnutUsually reckoned at about 1 to 2 tablespoons. It is a small amount by design; this dough is meant to be tender and bready, not short and flaky.
- Sweet milkPlain fresh whole milk, specified only to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk that period recipes often called for. Start with about 1/2 cup and add until the dough is soft but not sticky.
- A rather quick ovenPeriod cookery writers put a quick oven somewhere around 400 to 425F; the book itself gives no temperatures. Allow perhaps 30 to 40 minutes for the apples to soften and the crust to colour.
- Half an inch is thick on purposeRolling this out at 1/2 inch gives a crust that rises like a scone base under the fruit; rolled thinner it may go soggy under the apple juice.
- The baking tinA shallow rectangular tin or a 9-inch round cake tin both work; the dough is pressed up the sides to hold the juice. Butter it well, as the molasses will catch.
- MolassesUse unsulphured light molasses, not blackstrap, which is far more bitter than the ordinary cooking molasses of the period. A couple of tablespoons drizzled over the fruit is enough.
- The final sugarThe five minutes at the end with sugar scattered over is a glazing step, not more baking. Watch it, since the sugar over molasses can darken quickly.
- YieldProbably serves six or so, and is best eaten warm the day it is made; the biscuit base goes heavy once the fruit juice has soaked in.
Fruit tarts built on a soft dough base and baked in a shallow tin are a German domestic staple, made at home with whatever the season offered — apples, plums, cherries, rhubarb. The dough here has been Americanised: a European cook would more likely have used a yeast base or a sweet shortcrust, while this one leans on chemical baking powder, which by the 1890s was cheap, reliable and heavily advertised in the United States. The result is a dish with a foreign name that could be made from the ordinary contents of an American pantry in an hour.