No. 3171

Cherry Flawn

Flan aux Cerises

After lining the flawn ring the same as the apricot flawn (No. 3170), fill it with fine, ripe, sour cherries, first removing the pips and arranging them so that the holes caused by the removal of these pips lie underneath; dredge with sugar, bake in a moderate oven; when done cover with currant jelly (No. 3670) diluted in a little syrup. Take the pie from the ring, leave to cool, and when serving pour over more of the currant jelly diluted as before.

← No. 3170 Apricot, Peach, Plum or Nectarine Flawn Cold Entremets — Creams, Jellies & Charlottes No. 3172 Fruit Flawn →

For the Modern Kitchen

A cross-referenced recipe in Ranhofer's usual telegraphic style: the pastry and its handling live at No. 3170, and only the fruit and glaze are described here. A few conversions and one detail of arrangement make it workable.

"Flawn" and the flawn ringFlawn is an older English form of flan; here it means an open fruit tart, though in earlier English usage a flawn was often a custard or cheese tart. The flawn ring is a bottomless metal band set on a baking sheet, lined with pastry; a modern tart ring, or a loose-bottomed tart tin, does the same job.
Moderate ovenThe book gives no figure; a moderate oven is conventionally reckoned at about 350-375°F. A 9-inch flawn of pitted cherries on short paste should take roughly 35 to 45 minutes, until the pastry rim is well coloured and the juices are bubbling at the edge.
No quantities are givenThe book assumes a professional kitchen working from a standing paste. For a 9-inch ring, count on about 1½ lb of cherries after pitting and 3 to 4 tablespoons of sugar for dredging, more if the fruit is very sharp.
The point of turning the holes downThis is the instruction that matters. A pitted cherry set cut-side down keeps its juice from running out over the surface and drowning the pastry; it also leaves a smooth domed top for the jelly to sit on. Pack them close, in concentric rings, with no gaps.
Sour cherriesMorellos or Montmorency — the tart varieties, often easier to find frozen or jarred than fresh. Sweet cherries will taste flat under the jelly glaze; if that is all you have, cut the dredging sugar back sharply and add lemon juice.
The diluted jellyCurrant jelly (No. 3670) thinned with a little sugar syrup gives a brushable glaze that sets on cooling. Warm it just to fluid, no further; boiled-down jelly turns tacky and dulls. The second coat at serving is what makes the surface bright.
UnmouldingLift the ring away while the tart is still warm, before the escaped sugar sets and cements it to the sheet. Cool on the baking sheet or a rack — the base is fragile until the juices firm up.
YieldA 9-inch flawn serves six to eight. It is meant to be served cold, as the section heading indicates, and is best eaten the day it is baked.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summation of over thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its fruit flawns are French pâtisserie transcribed for an American kitchen brigade — hence the archaic English word flawn standing in for flan. Both descend from Old French flaon, from a late Latin word for a flat cake, and in medieval English cookery a flawn was commonly a custard or cheese tart. Sour cherries are the traditional choice for such tarts across northern Europe, from Alsatian and German cherry tarts to Hungarian pastry, because their acidity survives baking and sugar where sweet dessert cherries turn insipid. The currant-jelly glaze is often said to be common nineteenth-century practice: it seals the fruit against drying, restores the gloss that oven heat destroys, and adds the sharp red note that pectin-rich redcurrants supply. Ranhofer's habit of numbering everything and referring the reader onward — to the paste at No. 3170, the jelly at No. 3670 — reflects a book written for cooks who already had those preparations standing ready on the bench.