No. 3335

Pelerine Tartlets

Tartelettes Pelerines

Butter some plain tartlet molds; line them with puff paste parings (No. 146), and fill with almond cream (No. 40), and pastry cream (No. 46), half of each; cover with a flat of the same paste; cook, unmold, turn them over, and spread with a thin layer of Conde preparation (No. 2); push into the oven, bake and serve.

← No. 3334 Peach Tartlets with Rice Small Cakes for Entremets No. 3336 Valencia Tartlets →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes in cross-references, assuming you own the whole book; unpacked, this is a small covered almond-and-pastry-cream tart finished upside down with a baked almond-meringue glaze. Two things decide whether it works: the seal on the lid and the second, cooler trip through the oven.

What the numbered references areNo. 146 is the puff paste; the parings are the trimmings left from cutting other pastries, best re-stacked rather than re-kneaded so the layers survive. No. 40 is almond cream (ground almonds, sugar, butter, egg), No. 46 is pastry cream, and No. 2 is the Conde preparation, an icing along the lines of sugar and egg whites worked with ground almonds into a spreadable paste.
Half and half fillingEqual parts almond cream and pastry cream, mixed or layered, gives a frangipane that stays moist. Fill the lined molds no more than three-quarters full; both creams rise and the lid will lift and split if you overfill.
Sealing the lidBrush the rim of the lining with water or egg white before laying on the puff paste flat, and press firmly. The tartlet is turned out and inverted, so a weak seal means the filling escapes onto the sheet pan.
First bakeThe recipe gives no heat or time, only 'cook'. Puff paste wants a hot oven; in a modern one that is somewhere around 400-425F for roughly 15-25 minutes in small molds, until the paste is set and coloured through and no longer damp between the layers. Unmold while warm and invert so the flat base becomes the top.
Second bake for the CondéSecond bake for the Conde -- the recipe again specifies no heat or time. Spread the almond icing thinly, no thicker than a coin, and return to a moderate oven, around 350F, for something like 8-12 minutes; the glaze should set dry and pale gold, and too fierce a heat will colour it before the sugar sets.
Moldsplain tartlet molds here means smooth-sided rather than fluted; small round tinned molds. Modern non-stick mini-muffin or tartlet tins work; butter them regardless, as the recipe directs.
Yield and servingNo quantities are given; a batch of this sort would run to something on the order of a dozen or two small tartlets. They belong to the entremets course -- the page heading reads 'Small Cakes for Entremets' -- and are best served the day they are baked, the glaze softening overnight.

A Little History

Pelerine in nineteenth-century French means a short shoulder cape (the word is also the feminine of pelerin, pilgrim); reading the name as descriptive of the thin sheet of Conde icing lying over the inverted tartlet like a little mantle is plausible but not documented. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York for some three decades, published The Epicurean in 1894 as a working reference rather than a household book, which is why the recipe reads as a chain of numbers -- a brigade kitchen would have had almond cream, pastry cream and puff paste trimmings to hand. Thrift is plainly part of the dish: parings too short to make a vol-au-vent were good enough for a tartlet shell, and the Conde glaze -- traditionally said, like rice a la Conde, to take its name from the princely house of Conde -- turned leftovers into something fit for the entremets course.