No. 173

Band Tart

Tourte a bande

Roll out on a floured table, a layer of foundation paste (No. 135), cut in this a round, eight inches in diameter, lay this round on a small baking-sheet, moisten the border with a brush, and apply on this wet part, a puff-paste border having received six turns, five-eighths of an inch in thickness, one and one-half inches wide and twenty-six inches long; cut the two ends bias, fasten them together after slightly dampening them and set the tart aside in a cool place for fifteen minutes. Prepare an egg wash of well beaten whole eggs, or the yolks alone diluted in a little cold water, apply it to the border, prick the inside or else put in a small mold, to prevent it inflating, then set the tart in a hot oven the same as for a vol-au-vent for thirty or forty minutes. After removing it from the fire, detach it from the sheet, and lay it on a dish to keep warm.

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For the Modern Kitchen

This is a component, not a finished dessert: an eight-inch base of short paste with a raised puff-paste rim baked hollow, ready to be filled with fruit, pastry cream or a compote. Ranhofer assumes you already have his No. 135 foundation paste and a batch of puff paste on hand.

The hinge: keep the border cold and cut it cleanThe rim rises only if the puff paste is cold and its cut edges are not smeared. Cut the twenty-six-inch strip with a single decisive pass of a sharp knife or a pastry wheel, and rest the assembled tart at least fifteen minutes in the refrigerator, not merely a "cool place."
Foundation pasteNo. 135 is Ranhofer's plain lining paste, of the pâte à foncer type rather than a sweet or rich pastry. Any firm short crust that holds a shape without shrinking will stand in.
"Six turns"Six turns is the full classic count for puff paste, each turn being a fold followed by a roll. A good all-butter puff pastry will serve here; roll it to a scant 5/8 inch as directed, which is thicker than most modern recipes ask, because the band is the structure of the tart.
Oven heatRanhofer gives no degrees, only "a hot oven the same as for a vol-au-vent." In modern terms that means a hot oven, roughly 425-450F. The puff needs that initial blast for lift; expect to lower the heat once the border has risen and set, or the outside will colour long before the base is dry.
Thirty to forty minutesThat is a long bake for a shell, and it is deliberate — the base must be cooked through and crisp since it will later hold something wet. Watch the colour rather than the clock, and shield the rim with foil if it darkens early.
Stopping the centre from puffingPrick the inner disc all over, or set a small flan ring or an empty tart mould inside it as Ranhofer suggests. Pie weights on parchment do the same job; without one of these the middle balloons and there is no cavity left to fill.
Egg wash disciplineBrush the top of the border only. Egg running down the cut sides glues the layers together and the rim rises unevenly and lopsided.
Yield and servingOne eight-inch shell, roughly six to eight portions. It is at its best filled within a couple of hours of baking; Ranhofer has it detached from the sheet and kept warm on a dish.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894) records the kitchen of Delmonico's in New York, and this entry sits in the "Elementary Methods" chapter among the building blocks — pastes, glazes, coloured sugars — that the rest of the book's several thousand recipes draw on by number. Tourte à bande takes its name from the bande, the long strip of puff paste laid around the edge of a base to form a raised wall; the same logic produces the free-standing vol-au-vent, to which Ranhofer refers for the oven heat rather than giving degrees. Cross-referencing rather than repeating was common in nineteenth-century professional manuals, which were written for cooks who had served an apprenticeship and needed reminding, not teaching. The style of tart survives in French pâtisserie as the strip or banded tart, and the following entry in the book, "Empty Tarts, Ancient Style," makes the purpose plain enough: what is being baked here is a container.