Gutter Tarts
Take small patty pans, line them out with short crust and then fill them with red currants, black currants, raspberries or what fruit you choose; heap them up high in the center, add a little powdered sugar to each, wet the edge of the paste with water, then lay on a top covering about an eighth of inch thick, press the two edges of pastry together and then with a sharp knife pare off the excess of pastry from the edges of the patty pans, holding the knife in a slanting position toward the center of the tart or patty; now with the thumb press the paste around the base of the fruit, about half an inch from the edge of the patty pan; press it hard enough to all but break the paste and so as to push the fruit up in a cone in the center; now wash them with water and bake them. The object of pressing the paste so thin around the base of the fruit, is that the juice of the fruit may break through the paste in baking and run around the groove or gutter formed by the pressing of the paste, and when baked it has a rich and pretty effect. They take their name from the peculiar appearance given to them by the fruit juice so running in this groove, and are consequently called gutter tarts. They look very pretty and give a fine effect.
A Victorian tartlet with a deliberate flaw built into it: the lid is thinned at the base of the fruit mound so the juice bursts through and pools in the resulting ring. Nothing here is difficult, but the recipe gives no oven, no time and no quantities.
- Patty pansThese are shallow tartlet tins, roughly 2½ to 3 inches across, not muffin cups. A standard 12-cup shallow tartlet or mince-pie tray is the right shape; deep muffin tins give too much fruit and too little edge to work with.
- The hinge: thinning the grooveAfter sealing and trimming, press the lid down hard with your thumb in a ring about half an inch inside the rim, until the pastry is nearly but not quite broken. Too timid and no juice escapes; too firm and it splits before baking and the filling runs out over the tin rather than into the gutter.
- OvenThe book gives none. Short crust with wet fruit wants a hot start — 425F for the first 10 minutes to set the base, then 375F for another 15 to 20 until the pastry is coloured and juice has bled into the channel.
- Bake on a sheetThe whole point is that juice escapes. Set the tins on a lined baking sheet; sugared currant juice on an oven floor carbonises and smokes.
- "A little powdered sugar"Powdered sugar in this period means sugar ground fine, closer to today's caster than to confectioners' sugar with its cornstarch. The recipe gives no quantity; a rounded teaspoon per tart is a reasonable start, with more for black currants if you find them sharp.
- The water washBrushing with plain water and no sugar gives a matte, pale finish; the book gives no reason for it. An egg wash would gloss the top and could blur the dark juice ring.
- FruitCurrants on the stalk need stripping with a fork. Fresh red or black currants are seasonal and often easier found frozen; use them still frozen and heaped high, since they slump as they thaw.
- YieldA single quantity of short crust made with 8 oz flour and 4 oz butter lines and lids about ten to twelve 2½-inch tarts. Best eaten the day they are made, while the pastry is still crisp under the fruit.
Gutter tarts belong to the ornamental end of nineteenth-century pastry work, where the cook's skill was judged as much by appearance as by flavour, and the name is simply descriptive, as the recipe itself explains: the ring of escaped juice running in a channel round the mound of fruit. The technique depends on ingredients that were then cheap and local — red and black currants and raspberries, all summer soft fruits grown in kitchen gardens across Britain and the American East, and all juicy enough to bleed into the groove.