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Rouen Tarts
(Northern France.) Make a paste as for Vienna fritters, line small muffin rings with it, bake a light brown, fill them with a cream made of 2 eggs, beaten with 2 tablespoonfuls of powdered sugar, 2 tablespoonfuls of very rich cream, and a tablespoonful of lemon juice. Cook this carefully before pouring in, or else fill and bake again, for 10 minutes. Dust the tops with sugar.
A tartlet shell filled with what is essentially a lemon curd, finished either by cooking the cream first or by baking it in the shell. The original assumes you have already turned back to the Vienna fritters entry for the pastry.
- The paste is borrowedThe recipe gives no pastry of its own; it sends you to the Vienna fritters entry in the same book. Read that first, since the character of the tart depends entirely on whether that paste is a rich short crust or a choux-type batter, and the two behave very differently in a ring.
- Muffin ringsThese were plain metal bands set on a flat baking sheet, not the cup tins the word suggests today. Shallow tartlet tins or a muffin pan lined with pastry will stand in; keep the shells small, as the recipe directs.
- Bake the shells blindBake the shells empty -- "Bake a light brown" means the shells go into the oven unfilled; if you intend to fill and bake again, stop short of full colour. Line with paper and weights if the paste slumps, and let the shells cool before filling with cooked cream or the base will soak.
- Powdered sugarAt this period the term generally meant finely ground granulated sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold now. Either works in the custard; use confectioners' sugar for the dusting on top, where it sits better.
- Very rich creamHeavy or double cream, 36 per cent fat or above. Half-and-half will thin the filling and make it more likely to weep.
- The hinge: never let the custard boilTwo eggs, sugar, cream and lemon juice is a curd, and acid plus direct heat will scramble it. Cook in a bowl over barely simmering water, stirring constantly, until it coats the spoon, then strain. Add the lemon juice last if you want extra insurance.
- The second routeIf you fill the shells raw and bake instead, the recipe gives 10 minutes and no temperature; a moderate oven of about 350F suits tartlets this small. Pull them when the centres still shiver slightly, as carryover heat sets them and overbaking will make the tops grainy.
- YieldTwo eggs and three tablespoonfuls of liquid make well under a cup of filling, enough for perhaps six to eight small tarts. Best eaten the day they are made, as the shells soften overnight.
Cookbooks of this period often organised recipes by nationality or by town. Rouen, the old capital of Normandy, sits in the heart of France's dairy and apple country, which makes the very rich cream in the filling regionally apt even if the tart itself is a fairly generic small pastry with a lemon custard. Tartlets of this kind, a blind-baked shell filled with a cooked egg-and-cream mixture sharpened with citrus, appear to have been familiar in French p e0tisserie long before this book was written, and the Anglo-American habit of naming them after a French city says more about the appetite of readers for continental cachet than about any documented Rouennais original. The instruction offering two methods, cook the cream first or fill and bake, is a small sign of how loosely such recipes travelled: the writer knew both worked and left the choice to the cook.