No. 3020

Croustades of Venice, Meringued

Croustades de Venise Meringuees

Line some small buttered fruit pie circles, three-quarters of an inch high and two and a quarter inches in diameter, with fine foundation paste (No. 135), or else puff paste parings (No. 146); raise an edge and pinch it; place them on a baking sheet and egg the edges of each pie over twice. Put into a vessel four spoonfuls of fecula or arrowroot, six ounces of vanilla sugar, a grain of salt, eight whole eggs and eight yolks; mix well with a whisk and dilute with a pint and a half of cream or rich milk; strain the preparation through a sieve and then pour it into a saucepan containing four ounces of fresh butter; stir on the fire until the butter is entirely melted, and with this preparation fill the small pies, then put them into a slack oven to cook without browning; when the cream has set and the paste is cooked, remove the croustades and leave them till nearly cold. Cover the tops with meringue, forming it into a dome; decorate this, leaving a hollow in the center and dredge vanilla sugar over the whole; return them to a slow oven to brown to a fine light golden color, then take them from their molds and finish decorating with apricot marmalade (No. 3675) pushed through a cornet and some angelica and preserved cherries (demi-sucre).

For a Large Croustade.—Line a shallow hot pie mold with fine foundation paste (No. 135) or puff paste parings (No. 146); lay it on a baking sheet and fill it up with the same preparation as for the above; put it into a slack oven to cook for one hour. When the cream has set and the paste is cooked take out the croustade and let get partly cold before unmolding; cover it with meringue (No. 140), shaping it as a dome; decorate and finish the same as for the above.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A baked vanilla custard in a pastry case, capped with meringue — essentially an individual crème pâtissière tart browned under a soft meringue dome. The whole thing hinges on low, steady heat: the custard must set without ever bubbling, and the meringue must dry and color rather than weep.

"Slack oven" means 300-325F"Slack oven" means a low oven -- Ranhofer asks for a slack oven for the custard and a slow oven for the meringue; both indicate the bottom of the range, which modern kitchens usually read as somewhere around 300-325F. Above that the egg custard curdles and the tarts sink, and the large version's stated hour suits that sort of gentle heat. Brown the meringue in the same slow oven until light gold rather than under a broiler.
FeculaFecula is starch, in period usage most often potato starch. Arrowroot, which he offers as the alternative, behaves much the same here; cornstarch can stand in.
"Four spoonfuls"A spoonful in books of this period normally means a tablespoon, so probably about 4 tablespoons of starch. Given the very high egg content this is a light thickening -- the eggs do most of the setting.
A pint and a halfAn American pint of the period is 2 cups, so 3 cups of cream or whole milk for 8 whole eggs plus 8 yolks. That is an extremely rich custard by modern standards; it will set firm enough to slice.
The stovetop step is not a pastry creamYou are only warming the mixture until the 4 oz of butter melts. Do not let it thicken or approach a simmer or the eggs will scramble before they reach the pastry.
Vanilla sugarSix ounces of sugar scented with vanilla — made by burying split pods in a jar of sugar for a week or two. A teaspoon or so of vanilla extract added to plain caster sugar is the practical substitute, and it also serves for the dredging over the meringue.
Egging the edges twiceThe egg wash goes on the edges only, applied twice, sealing and glazing the pinched border. Worth doing as written, letting the first coat dry before the second.
Angelica and demi-sucre cherriesCandied angelica stem, still sold by cake-decorating suppliers, and cherries candied only to half strength so they stay soft. Ordinary glacé cherries and thin strips of candied citrus peel stand in without complaint.
YieldThe recipe gives no yield. Three cups of cream with eight whole eggs and eight yolks makes a large quantity of custard, well more than a dozen tartlets of the size given -- 2 1/4 inches across, 3/4 inch deep. No dimension is given for the large shallow mold. Serve the day they are made; the meringue softens overnight.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the Delmonico's kitchens in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set the entire repertoire down in one volume, cross-referenced by number so that a cook could chase a sauce or a paste back to its own entry. A croustade is simply a crust used as a container, and the Venetian name here is often said to follow the nineteenth-century French habit of attaching city names to garnishes and finishes rather than recording any genuine Venetian origin, though that is inference rather than documented fact. What dates it most clearly is the finish: apricot marmalade piped from a paper cornet, angelica cut into leaves, half-candied cherries. That kind of decoration was the visible proof of a professional kitchen.