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Rhubarb Tartlets
Choose a quantity of nice young rhubarb, wipe it on a cloth, cut it up into convenient lengths, put it into a stewpan with two or three small pieces of lemon peel, the juice of a lemon, a little water, and plenty of sugar, and stew it gently at the side of the fire. Make a quantity of good short-paste, line a number of buttered tartletpans with it, trim the edges neatly, fill them with uncooked rice, and bake them in a moderate oven. Mix the well-whisked white of an egg with one-half pint of cream, and sweeten it with loaf-sugar that has been rubbed on the yellow rind of a lemon, and then pounded and whisked to a firm froth, standing the basin, if possible, over the ice. When the tartlets are cooked turn the rice out, and remove them from their tins; fill each one with a quantity of the rhubarb, and pile the cream on top of them. Spread a fancy dish-paper or a folded napkin over a hot dish, arrange the tartlets on it, and serve.
A late-Victorian assembly job rather than a baked tart: crisp blind-baked shells, cold stewed rhubarb, sweetened cream. The only real skill is keeping the pastry dry, which means filling at the last minute.
- Fill only at serving timeThe shells, the compote and the cream should be made separately and combined just before the tartlets go to the table. Rhubarb throws a great deal of juice, and a filled shell softens quickly.
- Stalks onlyUse the stalks and discard the leaves entirely; they carry enough oxalic acid to be genuinely poisonous. Young forced rhubarb needs no peeling, and "convenient lengths" is left to the cook -- short pieces of an inch or so suit tartlets.
- "At the side of the fire"This is the coolest part of a range top: a bare simmer with very little water. Young rhubarb collapses quickly and will break up if stirred hard, so shake the pan instead. Drain off the excess syrup before filling.
- "Plenty of sugar"Reckon 1/2 to 3/4 cup granulated sugar per pound of trimmed rhubarb, adjusted to taste. The lemon juice and peel are not optional flourishes; they keep the compote from tasting flat once the sugar goes in.
- Oven and blind bakingA moderate oven is usually reckoned at around 350F. The uncooked rice is doing the work of modern pie weights, so line each shell with paper or foil first or you will be picking grains out of the pastry; 15 to 20 minutes should give a fully coloured shell.
- Short-pasteA plain short crust, sweetened or not. Keep it cold, and rest the lined pans in the refrigerator for half an hour before baking to limit shrinkage down the sides of the tins.
- Loaf sugar rubbed on lemon rindLoaf sugar came as a hard cone that cooks abraded against citrus peel to catch the oil, then crushed. Finely grated zest worked into caster or granulated sugar with your fingertips does the same thing in a minute.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup of heavy cream (36 percent or more). Whip it over ice, as directed, or simply chill the bowl and beaters; the mixture is meant to be a firm froth stiff enough to pile, not a pouring cream.
- The raw egg whiteThe whisked white lightens the cream but is never cooked. If that matters for your table, use pasteurized whites or leave it out and whip the cream a little stiffer.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; roughly a pound of rhubarb and a cup of cream would fill a dozen small tartlets. The "fancy dish-paper" is a doily; a folded napkin on the platter keeps them from sliding.
If this page comes from Oscar Tschirky's Waldorf compilation, it reflects the English and Anglo-French professional practice that book draws heavily on: short-paste tartlet shells blind-baked with rice, a stewed fruit filling and a piled sweetened cream. Rhubarb came to that repertoire relatively late. It was grown in Europe first as a medicinal root, and only in the nineteenth century did forced stalks become a reliable early-spring dessert fruit -- hence the lemon oil rubbed off the peel, the cream whipped over ice and the doily.