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Peach Tarts
Make shells of puff paste as previously directed, and, when baked, and cool, place in each little case one-half a canned peach. Imitate the peach-stone by placing in this cavity a few chopped nuts, or a couple of blanched almonds. These may be attractively furnished with handles, made from strips of paste baked over one-fourth pound baking powder tins, to insure the proper curve. Any fruit may be acceptably used in this way, and fresh fruit in season, may replace the canned.
An assembly recipe rather than a baking one: the work is in the puff paste shells and the decorative handles, and the rest is arrangement.
- The shells"As previously directed" refers back to the book's own puff paste instructions; no size or oven heat is given there or here, though the cases must be small enough to hold half a peach. In a modern oven, roughly 400-425F until dry and well risen. All-butter frozen puff pastry works; dock the bases and weight them so the halved peach sits in a hollow rather than on a dome.
- The handlesQuarter-pound baking powder tins were about 2 inches in diameter. Any small can or a metal cannoli form gives the same curve; drape 1/2-inch strips of paste over it, chill, then bake at 400F until crisp and slide them off while still warm.
- Canned peachesPeriod canned peaches were generally packed in syrup. Drain them well and blot dry, or the syrup will soften the pastry.
- Fresh fruitIf substituting fresh, halved peaches may be poached briefly in light syrup and cooled; very ripe raw fruit can weep into the pastry.
- The almond "stone"Two blanched almonds set in the cavity read as a stone. Sweet blanched almonds are what is meant here; bitter almonds, which older books sometimes call for in almond work, are not to be used.
- Assemble latePuff paste holds its crispness for perhaps half an hour under wet fruit. Bake the shells and handles ahead, keep them airtight, and fill only as the plates go out.
- YieldNo quantity is given. A pound of puff pastry makes about a dozen shells with enough trimmings for the handles; one canned peach half per tart.
This is a set piece from the era when a dessert was judged partly on how it looked coming to the table. The Butterick Publishing Company sold dress patterns before it sold cookbooks, and the eye for construction is on display here: the fruit is not merely served but reassembled into a little basket, complete with a handle shaped over a household object of known diameter. Baking powder tins were a standard fixture of the American kitchen by the 1890s and made a reliable form. The reliance on canned peaches is also of its moment. Commercial fruit canning expanded sharply in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and a cook who could set out peaches in midwinter was demonstrating something; the book's closing note that fresh fruit "in season" may replace the canned quietly reverses the modern hierarchy.