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Westphalian Apple Tart
Pare and chop 15 apples, fry them in butter, add 4 spoonfuls of apricot jam, and beat until smooth. Then add 1/4 pound of butter beaten to a cream, yolks of 4 eggs, and 1/4 pound of breadcrumbs, a spoonful of vanilla, and 6 ounces of powdered sugar. Spread this over the top of the apples, laid in a shell of paste, and bake 15 minutes in a hot oven.
GALETTE (eaten in France on Epiphany Day.).
Rub together 6 ounces of butter and 1/2 pound of flour, beating well. Add a pinch of salt and 2 well-beaten eggs, knead it carefully and roll it out into a large cake, 1/4 inch thick. Bake it in a hot oven on a buttered tin. Beat together 1 ounce melted butter, yolk of 1 egg, and 1/2 pint of cream, sugar to taste, and a spoonful of cordial, lemon juice, or vanilla. Fill the cake with this, roll up and glaze with sugar, sifted over the top. Serve hot, cut in slices.
WAFERS FOR DESSERT.(Provincial France.) Work up 1/2 a pound of Brie, Gruyere, or very fresh American cheese with as much butter, until smooth. Add 4 eggs, a little water, and flour to make a stiff paste. Roll out and fold it 3 times, then cut it into thin sticks, 1/2 inch wide, and bake in a hot oven on a buttered tin. Bake brown and serve very hot, with salad or fruit.
Three recipes run together here, all from the pastry section: a bread-crumb apple tart from Westphalia, an Epiphany galette, and cheese straws. The instructions assume a cook who already knows how a tart shell behaves, and the proportions need checking before you start.
- "A hot oven"In period usage generally something in the 400-450F range. For the apple tart that is probably too fierce for the depth of filling described; the crumb topping will brown before the apples set, so blind-baking the shell and finishing the filled tart nearer 375F is the safer course.
- Fifteen minutes is not enoughFifteen minutes is likely not enough -- a pastry case carrying fried apples plus a creamed butter-and-crumb topping will usually want 35-45 minutes to set through. The original's 15 minutes would only suit a very shallow tart in an already-hot oven.
- Fifteen applesThe size intended is unknown. Reckoning on roughly 3 lb of prepared apple gives a quantity that fills a 9-10 inch shell generously; a firm cooking variety holds its shape after frying in butter.
- "A spoonful of vanilla"Genuinely ambiguous. In a 1902 English-language book this may mean vanilla sugar, a vanilla-flavoured syrup, or extract. A tablespoon of modern extract would overwhelm the tart; a teaspoon is the sensible reading.
- Weights to volumes1/4 lb butter is 1 stick. Weigh the breadcrumbs and the sugar rather than measuring by cup, since "powdered sugar" in 1902 may mean fine granulated rather than confectioner's, and crumb volume swings widely with how dry they are. Beat the butter properly before the yolks go in or the mixture will split.
- The galette is not the modern galette des roisNo almond cream and no puff pastry here. It is a plain rolled short dough baked flat, then spread with a cream filling and rolled up while warm, closer to a jelly roll. Roll it while the sheet is still flexible or it cracks.
- Raw yolk in the galette fillingThe butter, yolk and cream mixture is never cooked, only spread on a baked sheet. Either thicken it over gentle heat to a custard or use pasteurized egg. "A spoonful of cordial" most likely means a sweet liqueur.
- The cheese wafers"very fresh American cheese" in 1902 points to a young domestic cheddar; processed cheese did not yet exist. Equal weights of cheese and butter to 4 eggs gives a very slack dough, so add flour until it just holds; fold three times, cut into 1/2 inch strips, and bake in a hot oven until brown, watching them closely.
- ServingBoth the tart and the galette cut into portions from a single sheet or shell; the original directs the galette to be served hot, cut in slices, and the wafers very hot.
With a Saucepan Over the Sea belongs to a genre popular around 1900: the American traveller's collection of dishes gathered abroad and rendered, sometimes loosely, for a home cook. That explains why a Westphalian tart, a French Epiphany cake and provincial cheese straws sit in one undivided block. The Westphalian tart's use of breadcrumbs rather than flour or almonds is characteristic of German baking. The galette here is one of the simpler regional flat cakes, not the puff-pastry-and-almond version now standard in Paris bakeries. The cheese wafers show the older placing of a savoury among the sweets, served with salad or fruit at the close of a meal rather than as a cocktail nibble.