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Apricot Flawn
Butter a flawn circle and place on a baking-sheet, then line with puff paste or trimmings, and trim off level to the rim. Mask the bottom with a thin layer of powdered sugar, and upon this sugar arrange halves of peeled or canned apricots until the flawn is full. Ornament the rim with a strip of paste which has been stamped, and sprinkle over with sugar, baking in a slack oven for thirty minutes.
A plain apricot tart built in a flan ring. The original assumes you already have puff paste and a pastry cook's oven, and it leaves quantities entirely to your judgment.
- Flawn circle"Flawn" is the older English form of flan, and the flawn circle is a plain metal tart ring set directly on a baking sheet. A modern loose-bottomed tart tin or ring does the same job.
- Puff paste or trimmingsA professional kitchen lined tarts with the offcuts left from other work, since a tart shell does not need full, even lift. All-butter puff pastry from a chill packet is a fair substitute; roll it thin, line the ring, and trim flush with a knife rather than stretching it.
- Slack ovenA slack oven is the coolest working range, usually reckoned at somewhere around 300F, though contemporary equivalents vary. Thirty minutes at that heat sets the fruit and dries the base without colouring the rim, but puff paste in a modern fan oven at 300F will stay pale and soft; if you prefer, start hotter to raise the paste and then drop the heat for the remainder.
- The sugar on the baseThe layer of powdered sugar under the fruit is the hinge of the recipe: it draws and holds the apricot juice so it does not soak straight into the pastry. Do not skip it, and do not substitute a wet glaze. "Powdered" here means fine caster sugar rather than modern confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch.
- QuantitiesNone are given, as was normal in a chef's notebook. For a 9-inch ring, count on about 1 1/2 lb fresh apricots (roughly 12-14 fruit) or two 15-oz cans of halves, 2 tablespoons of sugar on the base and 1 to 2 more sprinkled over.
- Canned apricotsIf using canned fruit, drain it thoroughly and blot the halves dry, cut side down, before arranging them. Syrup carried into the shell is the usual cause of a soggy base.
- The stamped rimThe ornamental strip is a band of paste cut with a fluted or crescent cutter and laid around the edge, both as decoration and to give the border height. Egg wash it if you want gloss; the recipe relies on sugar alone.
- YieldOne tart, six to eight portions. It is best eaten the day it is baked; a warm apricot glaze brushed over after cooling was a common finish in pastry work of the period, though Oscar does not call for it.
"Flawn" is the English word that shadowed the French flan for centuries: in medieval and early modern usage it covered a shallow open tart, custard or fruit, baked in a hoop, and it survives in this book as a piece of professional kitchen vocabulary rather than everyday American speech. By the time Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf repertoire appeared in print in the 1890s, the flan ring was ordinary equipment in a hotel pastry department. Apricots suited the method because they hold their shape and their acidity, and canned fruit -- which the recipe accepts without apology -- extended the tart beyond the short season in which fresh apricots reached New York.