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Strawberry Tart
Turn one pound of crushed loaf sugar into a preserving-pan with one-fourth pint of water, and boil it to a syrup. Put the whites of two eggs into the syrup and re-remove the scum off the top until only the foam arises. Pick the tops off one quart of strawberries, put them in the syrup and boil them until they look clear. Butter a tart-dish, line it with a short paste and bake it. When the paste is done, pour the stewed strawberries into it, and serve.
A nineteenth-century preserve poured into a blind-baked shell rather than a fruit pie baked with its filling. The whole outcome depends on cooking the berries in a sugar syrup until they turn translucent without collapsing.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar sold in a hard cone and broken up for use, which is why it is "crushed" here. One pound of ordinary granulated sugar, a little over two cups, is the direct substitute.
- The water measureOne-fourth pint in an American kitchen of this period is 4 fluid ounces, half a cup. That is a heavy syrup, which is the point: it draws water out of the berries rather than diluting them.
- The egg whites are for clarifyingThis is old confectioner's practice, not a custard step. Raw whites stirred into the boiling syrup coagulate, trap impurities, and rise as scum to be skimmed. The recipe has you keep skimming until nothing but clean white foam comes up, and stops there.
- Preserving-panA wide, shallow, unlined copper or heavy brass pan. Any wide heavy-bottomed saucepan or a straight-sided sauté pan works; width matters more than depth because it lets the syrup evaporate fast.
- A quart of strawberriesRoughly 1.25 to 1.5 lb, about 570-680 g, before hulling. Firm, slightly underripe fruit holds its shape better; fully ripe fruit is more likely to break down before it reaches the clear stage.
- "Until they look clear"The hinge of the recipe. The berries go from opaque red to glassy and translucent as syrup replaces their water. Watch them rather than the clock; past that point they slump and the tart weeps.
- The pastryShort paste is a plain shortcrust; the recipe does not say whether it is sweetened. The case is baked empty and fully done before filling, but no temperature or timing is given. In a modern oven, a moderately hot oven around 400F with weights, then uncovered until the base is dry and coloured, is a reasonable reading.
- ServingThe recipe gives no tin size or number of portions; a quart of fruit suits a tart of roughly 8 or 9 inches. Fill it shortly before serving, since the syrup will soak into the crust as it stands, and let the fruit cool from boiling so it sets slightly.
Oscar Tschirky was maitre d'hotel at the Waldorf, and his 1896 book collects a great deal of standard European hotel practice alongside the dishes the house was known for. Clarifying sugar syrup with egg white was routine confectionery technique through the nineteenth century, described in similar terms in Jarrin, Francatelli and other household manuals; it mattered most for earlier, less thoroughly refined sugars, and by the 1890s loaf sugar was clean enough that the step survives here largely as habit. Loaf sugar was in any case being displaced by loose granulated sugar around the time Oscar wrote, so recipes calling for it were describing a shopping habit their readers were losing.