No. 764

Spinach Tartlets

Tartelettes aux Epinards

Line the small tartlet molds with a thin foundation paste (No. 135), prick the bottom, pick and wash one pound of spinach, parboil it in salted water in an untinned copper vessel, and when the leaves crush easily between the fingers, drain, refresh and drain it once more, press it well between the hands to extract all the water, and weigh one pound of it, then chop it up finely, and put it into a saucepan over a quick fire with four ounces of butter added, leave it to dry for a few minutes, then thicken it with one tablespoonful of flour, moistening with two gills of cream. When cold add two ounces of parmesan, two ounces of butter, eight egg-yolks and four whites beaten to a stiff froth; mix together thoroughly and fill up the molds; finish cooking them in a slack oven.

← No. 763 Semolino Tartlets Garnishings No. 765 Tartlets with Cream and Parmesan Cheese Garn →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

Ranhofer's tartlets are a soufflé-style spinach filling baked in small pastry shells, meant to ring a roast rather than stand alone. Two things need attention before you start: the copper pan and the weight of spinach.

Skip the untinned copperCooking greens in bare copper was a nineteenth-century trick for holding a vivid colour, and it works because a little copper binds to the chlorophyll. It also means dissolved copper in the food, particularly with salt and any acidity. Use stainless steel and accept a slightly duller green, or add a pinch of baking soda to the blanching water if colour matters that much.
How much spinachThe text asks for a pound, then tells you to weigh a pound after blanching and pressing. Pressed spinach loses a large share of its raw weight, likely more than half, so a pound of cooked, squeezed leaves means starting with several pounds of raw spinach. Read the second weight as the operative one.
GillsTwo gills is one cup of cream. Four ounces of butter is one stick; the second two ounces is half a stick more, added off the heat.
Slack ovenA slack or cool oven is about 300-325F. The filling is essentially a cheese soufflé base and will curdle or blow apart in a hot oven; low and slow lets it set.
The pastryNo. 135, the foundation paste, is a plain unsweetened short crust. Any pâte brisée works. Line the moulds, prick the bases, and blind-bake them until dry and barely coloured before filling, otherwise the wet spinach mixture leaves the bottoms raw.
Let the base coolThe instruction to add the eggs only when cold is not optional. Eight yolks going into a hot roux-thickened purée will scramble. Cool to room temperature, beat in yolks and parmesan, then fold the four whipped whites in last and bake immediately.
Yield and servingEight yolks and four whipped whites give the filling its lift; the number of moulds it fills depends on their size. They are at their best within a few minutes of leaving the oven, while the filling still stands above the rim; they settle as they cool. The book files them among the Garnishings.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its Garnishings chapter is a catalogue of small edible ornaments built to circle a joint or fill the well of a platter. Tartlets like these were structural as much as culinary: a ring of identical pastry cases gave a served dish height and rhythm at a period when food still often came to the table as a composed set piece rather than as an individually plated portion, though by the 1890s service in sequence was increasingly the norm. The direction to blanch spinach in untinned copper reflects long-standing professional practice in French kitchens, where bare copper bassines were kept specifically for green vegetables and preserves; the effect on colour was well known to cooks well before the chemistry was understood, and it was already being questioned on health grounds in the same decades Ranhofer was writing.