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Pear Flawn
Prepare a good paste with eight ounces of flour and some butter, roll it out into a round about ten inches in diameter, then gather it up about two inches all round the edges, which crimp and decorate with a wreath of paste leaves. The edges of the flawn should be moistened with a little water to make them stick. Peel some fine pears, cut them in halves lengthwise and put them in a preserving-pan with some sugar, the juice of one or two lemons and the thinly-pared and shred rind of one lemon. Cook the pears slowly till tender, and leave them till cold. Bind a strip of buttered paper round the flawn, fill it with the pears and their syrup and bake for three-fourths of an hour. When cooked take the paper off the flawn, glaze it over with apricot marmalade and serve it.
A free-standing pear tart built on a crimped pastry base rather than in a tin, so the pastry wall and the paper collar are doing the work of a ring mould. Two things decide whether it holds: the pears must be fully cooked and cold before they go in, and the syrup must be reduced enough not to flood the case.
- "A good paste"Eight ounces of flour is about 2 cups, or 225 g; a short crust made with roughly half that weight in butter (4 oz / 115 g) and iced water will handle correctly. Chill the rolled round before crimping or the two-inch turned-up rim will slump.
- Flawn means flanHere it means an open tart shaped by hand, not a baked custard. The dough is rolled to a 10-inch round, then the outer two inches are pinched upright to form the sides, giving a finished tart of about 6 inches across.
- The paper bandThe buttered paper tied round the outside is a collar to keep the hand-raised wall from spreading in the heat. Baking parchment and kitchen twine do the same job; remove it only after the tart comes out, as the recipe says.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A tart of this kind suits a moderate to moderately hot oven for the three-quarters of an hour specified.
- Cook the pears twice, deliberatelyThey are poached in sugar, lemon juice and shredded lemon peel until tender, then cooled completely. Warm or underdone pears will steam the pastry from the inside. If the poaching syrup is thin, boil it down to a light glaze before filling.
- Pears to useChoose a firm variety that holds its shape - Bosc, Anjou or an underripe Bartlett. The recipe does not say how many; halve them lengthwise as directed.
- Apricot marmaladeThis means apricot jam, warmed and sieved, brushed over the fruit while the tart is still hot. It is a glaze for gloss and to seal the surface, not a layer of preserve.
- YieldBest eaten the day it is baked; the pastry softens under the syrup overnight.
"Flawn" is the older English form of flan, by way of Old French flaon; the Latin fladonem behind it is generally traced to a Germanic word for a flat cake. The word covered open tarts, both sweet and savoury, in English cookery from the medieval period onward. The technique itself - a hand-shaped pastry wall braced with a buttered paper band - belongs to an era before the tart tin with a removable base was standard equipment, and the apricot glaze finish is standard in classical French patisserie, where sieved apricot jam is a common varnish for fruit tarts.