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Green Gooseberry Tarts
Remove stems and tails of the berries; stew slowly in very little water till the fruit breaks, then sweeten well and set them aside to cool. When cold bake in pastry shells with a top of puff paste. Brush each over while hot with beaten egg and set back in the oven three minutes to glaze. Serve cold.
A plain English fruit tart, written for cooks who knew pastry and needed only the filling. The gaps worth filling are the sugar, the moisture and the oven.
- "Tails" means the blossom endGooseberries carry a dried flower remnant opposite the stem. Both ends are pinched off with scissors or fingernails, a job called topping and tailing.
- Green means unripe, and very sourThese are hard, firm, acid berries picked before they colour, not the sweet dessert sort. "Sweeten well" means roughly 3/4 to 1 cup sugar per pound of fruit; taste while warm, since cold fruit reads less sweet.
- Very little water is the pointA few tablespoons is enough to keep the pan from catching. Gooseberries are full of juice and collapse quickly, and a wet filling will soak the bottom crust.
- Thicken before it goes in the shellStewed gooseberries are loose. A tablespoon of cornstarch slaked in cold water, stirred in at the end of the stewing and cooked a minute, gives a filling that slices; gooseberries are also high in pectin and will set somewhat on their own as they cool.
- OvenThe original names no heat or time. A hot start of about 425F for the first 15 minutes will set and lift the puff-paste lid; dropping to around 375F to finish, roughly another 15 to 25 minutes depending on size, should colour the top and cook the pastry through underneath.
- The glazeBrushing beaten egg onto an already hot tart and returning it for three minutes works, but it can streak. Beaten egg or egg white with a spoonful of sugar, brushed on before baking, gives a more even shine; if following the original, use a light hand and go back to a hot oven, not a cooling one.
- Puff pasteStore-bought all-butter puff pastry is a fair substitute for the top. Keep it cold to the moment it enters the oven, and cut a vent or two so steam escapes rather than lifting the lid off the fruit.
- YieldAbout a pound and a half of berries fills six individual tart shells or one 9-inch pie. Serve cold, as directed; the filling is soupy while warm.
Gooseberries were a fixture of British kitchen gardens and carried straight into American ones, where they were valued for arriving in early summer before most other fruit and for being usable while still green and hard. The unripe berry is almost purely acid, which is why every old recipe insists on sweetening well; it is also why gooseberries set so readily, being among the most pectin-rich fruits grown in a temperate garden. Their near-disappearance from American markets has a specific cause: Ribes bushes host part of the life cycle of white pine blister rust, and federal and state restrictions on growing currants and gooseberries were imposed in the early twentieth century to protect the timber industry, with some state bans lasting for decades.