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Strawberry Tartlets
Prepare and bake six small tartlet crusts. Pick off the stems and rapidly wash and drain on a cloth forty-eight medium, fresh strawberries, place in a bowl with two ounces fine sugar and a quarter gill rum. Turn them well in the seasoning, then place eight strawberries in each crust. Pour the remaining seasoning over the tartlets evenly, place in the oven for ten minutes. Remove, spread a teaspoon strawberry jelly over each tartlet, take up from the mould, dress on a dish with a folded napkin and serve.
A brief, precise little dessert of the French pastry tradition, written for a cook who already knows how to line and blind-bake tartlet moulds. The measurements are the only real obstacle.
- A quarter gill of rumA gill is half a cup, so a quarter gill is about 1 fluid ounce, or 2 tablespoons. The recipe does not say which rum; it is there for perfume, not sweetness.
- Two ounces fine sugarThat is a weight — about 1/4 cup of caster or superfine sugar. "Fine" here means fine-grained, so it dissolves in the berry juice rather than grinding underfoot.
- Bake the shells firstThe crusts are baked before the fruit goes in; the recipe gives no temperature and does not say whether to cool them. Line small moulds with a short or sweet pastry, dock and weight them, and bake until dry and pale gold.
- The ten minutes in the ovenNo temperature is given, and the recipe uses no oven term. A fairly hot oven suits so short a stay; the purpose appears to be to set the juices rather than cook the fruit down -- pull them while the berries still hold their shape.
- Forty-eight strawberriesEight per tartlet, so the berries must be small enough to sit in a single layer; forty-eight medium berries will run to rather more than a pint. The recipe stems them first, then washes and drains -- surface water dilutes the syrup and slackens the pastry.
- Strawberry jelly as glazeThis is a clear jelly or sieved preserve, warmed until spreadable and brushed over the warm tartlets to seal and gloss them. Cold jam straight from the jar will tear the fruit.
- Take up from the mouldUnmould while still warm. Left to cool in the tin, the sugared juices grip the metal and the shells crack coming out.
- Yield and servingSix tartlets, one each. The folded napkin on the serving dish is period service.
The International Cook Book (1906) is the work of Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its recipes carry the clipped, professional shorthand of a restaurant kitchen -- quantities by the ounce and the gill, and an assumption that the reader can already make pastry. Glazing fruit tartlets with a warmed jelly is standard French pâtisserie practice, and it does real work: the thin lacquer keeps the fruit from drying and gives the shine that sells the dish across a dining room. Rum and strawberries turn up together in the period, the fruit macerated briefly in spirit and sugar rather than cooked into a compote.