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Jelly Tarts
Roll out one-half pound of rich puff paste, cut it into rounds about two and one-half inches in diameter, dampen the edges with water, pinch the paste so that it will assume shapes like three-cornered hats, put a small tin of the same shape inside each tart and bake lightly in a moderate oven. Remove them when done, brush over the paste with egg and glaze, pipe around the sides both inside and out, fill up with small squares of any kind of jelly, over this place a heap of well-whipped cream, pipe over this again, and serve.
A pastry-cook's shorthand rather than a full recipe: Oscar assumes you already have puff paste, a piping bag and a pastry chef's sense of when something is "done." A few of the terms need unpacking.
- Do the shaping first, and coldThe hinge of the whole thing is keeping the paste chilled until it hits the oven. Cut, fold and fit the tins, then refrigerate the shaped cases 20-30 minutes so the butter is firm; warm puff paste slumps and the three-cornered form collapses.
- "Three-cornered hats"A round of paste with three sides turned up and pinched at the corners, like a tricorne. The small tin set inside is a form to hold the shape and keep the base from rising, the same job a pie weight does now.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives no figure; "moderate oven" is conventionally taken as somewhere around 350F. Modern puff paste is generally started hotter, around 400-425F, to force the steam that lifts the layers, then dropped; "bake lightly" suggests pale gold, not brown, since the cases go back for glazing.
- "Brush over with egg and glaze"Possibly one action, possibly two: beaten egg for colour, and a glaze, either a dusting of icing sugar flashed under high heat to a shine or a thin brush of warm apricot or plain sugar syrup. Either would give a lacquered surface.
- "Pipe around the sides"The recipe does not say with what; icing through a small plain or star tube is the likely reading, applied to the cooled case. The later "pipe over this again" may be whipped cream rather than icing.
- The jellyFirm fruit jelly - currant, quince, apple - set hard enough to be cut into neat squares. Modern soft-set jam or preserve will not hold a cube and will bleed into the pastry.
- Assemble at the last minuteFilled puff paste goes soft within the hour. Bake and glaze the cases ahead, then add jelly and cream just before they go to the table.
- YieldThe recipe gives no count; half a pound of puff paste cut in 2½-inch rounds will make a dozen or more small tarts, depending on how thin it is rolled and how much is lost in trimmings.
Oscar Tschirky was never actually the chef of the Waldorf - he was the maitre d'hotel - but his 1896 collection gathered the working formulas of the hotel's kitchens, and the pastry entries read exactly like notes passed between professionals who share a vocabulary. Jelly tarts of this kind belong to the classical French pastry tradition that American hotel pastry departments inherited: a puff paste shell, a fruit jelly, whipped cream, and piped decoration. The reliance on shaped tins set inside the paste suggests a kitchen with a drawer of specialist forms and a pastry cook turning out dozens at a time, which is why the instructions never pause to explain anything.