No. 3332

Fanchonnette Tartlets Meringued

Tartelettes Fanchonnette Meringuees

Lay in a vessel three ounces of sugar and one ounce of sifted flour; beat up with five egg-yolks, and dilute with five gills of milk, adding a little vanilla. Pour this into tartlet molds lined with puff paste parings (No. 146), and bake in a medium oven. After they are done cover the tops with a flat layer of meringue preparation (No. 140) and on this form a rosette or any other decoration with more meringue; sprinkle with sugar, and push in the oven for an instant to color. When cold garnish the inside of the decoration with currant jelly (No. 3670).

← No. 3331 Demonet Tartlets Small Cakes for Entremets No. 3333 Herisson Tartlets →

For the Modern Kitchen

A baked custard tartlet finished with meringue and jelly, written for a professional pastry brigade that already knew what the cross-referenced numbers meant. The hinge is the custard: it must be baked gently until barely set, since a boiled egg custard in a thin shell will curdle and weep under the meringue.

Five gills of milkA gill is half a cup, so this calls for 2 1/2 cups of milk against five yolks, 3 oz sugar and 1 oz flour. That is a deliberately loose, pourable custard rather than a pastry cream, and the ounce of flour is what keeps it from breaking in the oven.
Weigh the sugar and flourThree ounces of sugar is about 6 tablespoons; one ounce of flour is a scant 1/4 cup. Ranhofer's kitchen worked by weight and the ratio matters more here than in most tart fillings.
A medium ovenThe book gives no temperatures; a modern equivalent is somewhere around 325-350F. Custard sets at roughly 170-180F internally, so pull the tartlets when the centres still move as a single mass rather than rippling.
Puff paste paringsNo. 146 is the book's puff paste; the parings are the trimmings left from cutting it. Stack scraps in layers rather than balling them up, chill well, and roll thin; leftover rough puff or a bought all-butter puff works the same way.
Blind bakingThe original pours raw custard into raw-lined molds. In a domestic oven the bases hold better if the shells are docked and part-baked before filling.
VanillaThis could mean a piece of vanilla bean infused in the milk, though vanilla extract was also in use by 1894. If using a pod, split and steep it in warmed milk, then strain before combining with the yolks.
The meringue and the colouringNo. 140 is a meringue preparation, sugared and piped. "Push in the oven for an instant to color" implies a very hot oven or a broiler for well under a minute; watch it constantly, as the sprinkled sugar catches quickly.
Currant jelly lastSpoon the jelly into the piped decoration only once the tartlets are fully cold, or it will slacken and run into the meringue.
YieldThe quantities fill roughly a dozen to sixteen 2 1/2-inch tartlet molds, depending on depth. Serve the same day; the meringue softens overnight.

A Little History

Fanchonnettes belong to the early nineteenth-century French repertoire of small meringued tarts, the name a diminutive of Fanchon, itself a pet form of Françoise; their invention is traditionally credited to Carême, though the attribution is repeated more often than it is documented. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, gathered them into The Epicurean (1894) among dozens of near-identical tartlets distinguished only by their filling and finish, which is how a professional pastry section actually worked: one base, one custard, and a shelf of garnishes. The dense cross-referencing here, sending the cook to numbered entries for puff paste parings, meringue and currant jelly, is the book's defining habit and a reminder that it was written for a kitchen with those preparations already standing ready, not for a household cook starting from nothing.