BARBERRY TART

Barberries, with half their weight of fine brown sugar, when they are thoroughly ripe, and with two ounces more when they are not quite so, make an admirable tart. For one of moderate size, put into a dish bordered with paste three quarters of a pound of barberries stripped from their stalks, and six ounces of sugar in alternate layers; pour over them three tablespoonsful of water, put on the cover, and bake the tart for half an hour. Another way of making it is, to line a shallow tin pan with very thin crust, to mix the fruit and sugar well together with a spoon before they are laid in, and to put bars of paste across instead of a cover; or it may be baked without either.[123]

Footnote 123:

The French make their fruit-tarts generally thus, in large shallow pans. Plums, split and stoned (or if of small kinds, left entire), cherries and currants freed from the stalks, and various other fruits, all rolled in plenty of sugar, are baked in the uncovered crust; or this is baked by itself, and then filled afterwards with fruit previously stewed tender.

THE LADY’S TOURTE, AND CHRISTMAS TOURTE À LA CHÂTELAINE.

Lady’s Tourte. ]

To make this _Tourte_, which, when filled, is of pretty appearance, two paste-cutters are requisite, one the size, or nearly so, of the inside of the dish in which the _entremets_ is to be served, the other not more than an inch in diameter, and both of them fluted, as will be seen by the engraving. To make the paste for it, throw a small half saltspoonful of salt into half a pound of the finest flour, and break lightly into it four ounces of fresh butter, which should be firm. Make these up smoothly with cold milk or water, of which nearly a quarter of a pint will be sufficient, unless the butter should be very hard, when a spoonful or two more must be added. Roll the paste out as lightly as possible twice or _thrice_ if needful, to blend the butter thoroughly with it, and each time either fold it in three by wrapping the ends over each other, or fold it over and over like a roll pudding. An additional ounce, or even two, of butter can be used for it when very rich pastry is liked, but the _tourte_ will not then retain its form so well. Roll it out evenly to something more than three-quarters of an inch in thickness, and press the large cutter firmly through it; draw away the superfluous paste, and lay the _tourte_ on a lightly floured baking-tin. Roll the remainder of the paste until it is less than a quarter of an inch thick, and stamp out with the smaller cutter—of which the edge should be dipped into hot water, or slightly encrusted with flour—as many rounds as will form the border of the _tourte_. In placing them upon it, lay the edge of one over the other just sufficiently to give a shell-like appearance to the whole; and with the finger press lightly on the opposite part of the round to make it adhere to the under paste. Next, with a sharp-pointed knife, make an incision very evenly round the inside of the _tourte_ nearly close to the border, but be extremely careful not to cut too deeply into the paste. Bake it in a gentle oven, from twenty to thirty minute

_Obs._—Six ounces of flour, and three of butter, will make sufficient paste for this _tourte_, when it is required only of the usual moderate size. If richer paste be used for it, it must have two or three additional turns or rollings to prevent its losing its form in the oven.

_Christmas Tourte à la Châtelaine._—Make the case for this _tourte_ as for the preceding one, and put sufficient mincemeat to fill it handsomely into a jar, cover it very securely with paste, or with two or three folds of thick paper, and bake it _gently_ for half an hour or longer, should the currants, raisins, &c., not be fully tender. Take out the inside of the _tourte_, heap the hot mincemeat in it, pour a little fresh brandy over; just touch it with a strip of lighted writing-paper at the door of the dining-room, and serve it in a blaze; or if better liked so, serve it very hot without the brandy, and with Devonshire cream as an accompaniment.[124]

Footnote 124:

Sufficient of cream for this purpose can easily be prepared from good milk.

GENOISES À LA REINE, OR HER MAJESTY’S PASTRY.

Make some _nouilles_ (see page 5), with the yolks of four fresh eggs, and when they are all cut as directed there, drop them lightly into a pint and a half of boiling cream (new milk will answer quite as well, or a portion of each may be used), in which six ounces of fresh butter have been dissolved. When these have boiled quickly for a minute or two, during which time they must be stirred to prevent their gathering into lumps, add a small pinch of salt, and six ounces of sugar on which the rinds of two lemons have been rasped; place the saucepan over a clear and very gentle fire, and when the mixture has simmered from thirty to forty minutes take it off, stir briskly in the yolks of six eggs, and pour it out upon a delicately clean baking-tin which has been slightly rubbed in every part with butter; level the _nouilles_ with a knife to something less than a quarter of an inch of thickness, and let them be very evenly spread; put them into a moderate oven, and bake them of a fine equal brown: should any air-bladders appear, pierce them with the point of a knife. On taking the paste from the oven, divide it into two equal parts; turn one of these, the underside uppermost, on to a clean tin or a large dish, and spread quickly over it a jar of fine apricot-jam, place the other half upon it, the brown side outwards, and leave the paste to become cold; then stamp it out with a round or diamond-shaped cutter, and arrange the _genoises_ tastefully in a dish. This pastry will be found _delicious_ the day it is baked, but its excellence is destroyed by keeping. Peach, green-gage, or magnum bonum jam, will serve for it quite as well as apricot. We strongly recommend to our readers this preparation, baked in pattypans, and served hot; or the whole quantity made into a pudding. From the smaller ones a little may be taken out with a teaspoon, and replaced with some preserve just before they are sent to table; or they may thus be eaten cold.

_Nouilles_ of 4 eggs; cream or milk, 1-1/2 pint; butter, 6 oz.; sugar 6 oz.; rasped rinds of lemons, 2; grain of salt: 30 to 40 minutes. Yolks of eggs, 6: baked from 15 to 25 minutes.