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Flanc Anglaise
Roll out on a lightly floured table a half pound pie paste. Line a deep pie plate, lightly buttered, press down the paste around the edges of the dish, trim well all around. Spread four tablespoons apple marmalade at bottom of plate. Peel, cut into balves six sound apples, remove the cores and finely slice them; place nicely over the marmalade. Mix one teaspoon ground cinnamon with two ounces fine sugar and sprinkle over the apples; set in oven to bake for thirty minutes. Remove, spread two tablespoons currant jelly over the surface and serve.
A plain open apple tart with a jam base and a jelly glaze. The original assumes you know your oven and your pastry, so a few numbers are worth filling in.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. A modern working figure of about 375F suits a tart that must set its pastry and soften raw apple slices in half an hour.
- Half a pound of pie pasteThat is roughly enough short pastry to line one deep pie plate. A single store-bought crust is a fair substitute.
- Apple marmaladeNot citrus marmalade but a thick, sweetened apple puree reduced until it holds its shape. Apple butter is the closest modern equivalent; unsweetened applesauce is too loose and will soak the base.
- Two ounces fine sugarAbout 1/4 cup of caster or superfine sugar, by weight rather than volume. Adjust down if the apples are sweet dessert varieties rather than tart cookers.
- "Balves"A typesetter's error for halves. The apples are halved only to make coring easy before they are sliced thin and shingled over the marmalade.
- Judging donenessThirty minutes is enough only if the slices are genuinely thin. The tart is ready when the pastry rim is browned and a knife tip meets no resistance in the fruit; give it another ten minutes if it does.
- The jelly glazeCurrant jelly spreads most easily while the tart is still hot. Warming the jelly slightly and brushing it on as soon as the tart leaves the oven helps it flow into an even sheen rather than sitting in streaks.
- YieldOne deep-plate tart, six to eight servings. Best eaten the day it is made, as the fruit weeps into the pastry overnight.
Flanc appears to be a compositor's spelling of flan, which in French professional kitchens of the period generally meant an open tart baked in a shallow ring or plate rather than the baked custard the word now suggests in Spanish and Latin American cooking. The title as printed is "Flanc Anglaise," and the tag might be read as pointing to an English handling of apples affruit base, sugared and cinnamoned, then finished with a red jelly glaze instead of the apricot glaze a French pastry cook would reach for ut a documented signal it is not. The currant jelly finish is suggestive of a well-stocked larder of the era, when jellies were often put up in quantity each summer and used as much for glazing and saucing as for spreading on bread.