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Grape Tarts
Lightly butter a straight-edged pie plate, roll out on a lightly floured table half pound pie paste to the size of the plate and with it line the plate. Neatly press down the paste at the bottom and edges, then trim off that adhering around the edges, cover the pan with buttered paper, then fill up with dried beans and bake in oven for twenty minutes. Take out, let rest for five minutes, remove the beans and paper, spread two tablespoons currant jelly at the bottom of the pie. Remove stems from one and a half pounds sweet grapes, place them in a bowl, add two ounces sugar, tablespoon rum and one maraschino, mix well, then arrange them in the pie plate, set in oven for ten minutes. Remove, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over, lift up the tart from the paste and serve either hot or cold.
A straightforward blind-baked fruit tart, with two vague spots worth pinning down: the oven is never given a temperature and "one maraschino" is a measure that no longer means anything obvious.
- Oven temperatureNone is stated anywhere in the recipe. A moderately hot oven, around 400F, suits both stages: the twenty minutes for the weighted shell and the ten minutes for the filled tart.
- "Straight-edged pie plate"A shallow tin with vertical rather than sloping sides, closer to what we would call a tart pan or flan ring than a modern pie dish. A loose-bottomed tart tin makes the final unmoulding easier.
- Half pound pie pasteAbout 225 g of short pastry, roughly one standard single-crust batch. Chill the lined tin before baking or the sides will slump.
- Blind bakingButtered paper and dried beans are exactly modern practice; parchment and ceramic weights or the same beans work identically. The five-minute rest before lifting the paper out lets the pastry firm so the edges do not tear.
- "One maraschino"Ambiguous. It most likely means a measure of maraschino liqueur, matching the tablespoon of rum beside it, though a single maraschino cherry cannot be ruled out. A tablespoon of maraschino is the safer reading; kirsch is a reasonable substitute.
- Two ounces sugarA generous quarter cup by volume. Modern dessert grapes are often very sweet, so taste and cut this back if the fruit is already sugary.
- The grapesTable grapes of the period generally had seeds; the recipe asks only that the stems be removed. Seedless red or black grapes need no preparation, but if you halve them, set them cut side down so they hold their shape and shed less juice.
- The currant jellySpread on the baked base before the fruit goes in, the thin layer will help seal the pastry against the juice the grapes give up, as well as adding flavour.
- ServingOne tart, six to eight slices. Ten minutes only warms the grapes through; they should still be plump, not collapsed.
Fresh grape tarts of this kind sit close to the French tarte aux raisins, in which a pre-baked shell is glazed with jelly and filled with barely warmed fruit so the grapes keep their shape and shine. The maraschino is the Dalmatian liqueur made from marasca cherries, which appears frequently in hotel and restaurant cookery of the turn of the century as a flavouring for fruit desserts. The recipe's assumptions — buttered paper and dried beans, a straight-edged plate, pastry reckoned by the half pound — read as those of a trained kitchen rather than a home cook.