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Peach Tartlets
Sift one pound of flour through a fine sieve onto a table, make a hollow in the center and put in twelve ounces of butter broken in little bits, two tablespoonfuls of sugar, a little salt, the yolks of three eggs and a little water, and work them gradually together. Line a dozen or more buttered tartlet-moulds with the prepared paste, put a thin layer of apple marmalade on the bottom of each, and half fill them with rice boiled in milk; cover each with paper and bake in a moderate oven. When done remove from the oven and leave them for ten minutes, then spread in a layer of marmalade, fill up the spaces with rice that has been boiled and mixed with cream, and put half a preserved peach on each, round side upward. Squeeze some meringue through a biscuit-forcer in little beads between the paste and peaches, sprinkle powdered sugar over and place them in a slow oven for ten or twelve minutes. Reduce the peach syrup, take the tartlets out of the oven, dip a paste-brush in the syrup, and brush the peaches over with it. Arrange them in a group on a dish covered with an ornamental dish-paper, and serve.
A full French pastry assembly compressed into one paragraph: rich short paste, a milk-rice filling, apple purée, preserved peach and piped meringue. Read it through and lay out components before starting, since the tartlets are built in two baking stages.
- The hinge: bake the shells coveredThe paper laid over each mould keeps the top of the rice and the pastry rim from colouring during the first bake, because the tartlets go back into the oven later with meringue on them. Skip it and the edges are dark before the meringue has set.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe says only 'moderate' for the first bake and 'slow' for the second; no temperatures or first-bake timing are given. A moderate oven is usually read today as around 350F and a slow oven as around 300F. Bake the shells until the paste is set and pale gold. The ten to twelve minutes specified for the slow oven is only enough to dry and faintly colour the piped beads.
- The pasteOne pound flour is about 3 1/2 cups; twelve ounces of butter is three sticks. That is a very high fat ratio, a rich pâte sucrée. Keep the butter cold, add water a spoonful at a time, and chill the dough before lining the moulds or it will slump.
- "Apple marmalade"Not citrus marmalade. This is apples cooked down to a thick, spreadable purée, closer to apple butter than to applesauce, stiff enough to sit in a layer without soaking the pastry.
- Rice boiled in milkRice simmered in milk until fully tender and thick; the recipe does not specify a variety or say whether it is sweetened. The second quantity is rice boiled in the same way and then loosened with cream so it can be spooned into the gaps around the peach.
- Preserved peachesPeach halves in heavy syrup; good canned or jarred peaches serve. The recipe has the syrup reduced and brushed on after the second bake, not before.
- MeringueNo quantity is given. Two egg whites beaten stiff with about 1/4 cup superfine sugar pipes enough beads for a dozen tartlets, and uses the whites left from the three yolks in the paste.
- Moulds and yieldStandard small tartlet moulds; the recipe gives no size. 'A dozen or more' is all it commits to. One per person as a dessert.
Oscar Tschirky, the Swiss-born maître d'hôtel whose name became shorthand for the Waldorf, published his Cook Book by 'Oscar' of the Waldorf in 1896, and its pastry chapters read as straight late-nineteenth-century French practice transplanted to a New York hotel kitchen. Tartlets built on a bed of sweetened milk rice belong to a broad family of milk-rice desserts in that repertoire. The preserved peach is the period detail worth noticing: halves in syrup, with the reduced syrup serving as glaze. The paper cap over each mould and the meringue beads piped between paste and fruit are part of the same finished presentation, set out on ornamental dish-paper.