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Strawberry Flawn
Butter a flawn-circle and line it with a nice tart paste. Cover the paste with a sheet of buttered paper, and bake it in a slack oven. When cooked remove the paper and cover the paste with a thin coating of apricot marmalade. When cold fill the hollow of the paste with some nice ripe freshly-gathered strawberries, putting them in close layers, and pouring over them a little thick syrup. Whip one-half pint of cream to a stiff froth, adding powdered sugar and flavoring to taste. Pour the cream over the strawberries, raising it in a dome. Put the flawn in a folded napkin laid on a dish, and serve.
A blind-baked tart shell, sealed with apricot glaze, filled with berries and domed with whipped cream. The one thing that decides whether it works is the apricot layer: it waterproofs the pastry against the syrup and the fruit, so brush it on generously and let it set before the strawberries go in.
- Flawn-circleA flan ring — a bottomless metal hoop set on a baking sheet, still sold for tart work. A 9-inch loose-bottomed tart tin does the same job.
- Slack ovenA cool oven; period glosses vary, but somewhere in the region of 275-325F. Low and slow keeps a sugared tart paste pale and crisp; a hot oven colours the edges before the base has dried out.
- Buttered paper instead of weightsButtered paper -- The recipe weights nothing; the paper alone shields the paste. To do it now, line with parchment and fill with dried beans or pie weights, bake 20-25 minutes, then lift out the paper and give it another 8-10 minutes to dry the base.
- Tart pasteMost likely a sweet short pastry rather than a flaky pie dough, though the recipe does not specify. Rest it chilled before rolling or the ring will shrink away from the sides.
- Apricot marmaladePeriod usage for apricot jam. Warm it with a spoonful of water and push it through a sieve to remove fruit pieces, then brush the shell while the glaze is hot and the pastry still warm.
- Thick syrupA heavy sugar syrup, roughly two parts sugar to one part water boiled briefly and cooled. Use it sparingly; a few teaspoons brushed over the berries gives gloss, more will pool and soften the crust.
- Half a pint of creamOne cup of heavy cream, which whips up to about two cups — enough to dome an 8- or 9-inch tart. Sweeten lightly and flavour with vanilla or a spoonful of kirsch.
- Yield and timingNo yield is given; a tart of this size would plausibly serve six to eight. Assemble within an hour of serving, since strawberries begin to weep as soon as sugar touches them.
- The folded napkinA standard serving convention of the period, and a practical one: the napkin keeps the ring of pastry from sliding and absorbs any syrup that escapes at the table.
"Flawn" is the old English form of the French flan, from Old French flaon and Late Latin fladonem, from a word of Germanic (Frankish) origin, flado, a flat cake; in medieval and early modern English it covered any open pastry case with a filling, sweet or savoury. By the time Oscar Tschirky compiled his book for the Waldorf in 1896, the word was already old-fashioned in home kitchens even as the technique — a blind-baked ring, a glaze, fresh fruit and whipped cream — carried on in hotel pastry work. The instruction to use "freshly-gathered" strawberries is not fussiness but a reminder of the season: a strawberry flawn was a few weeks' dish, and the apricot glaze helped protect fruit that had already begun to give up its juice.