To Make a Tart

My tart making experience is based on a couple recipes from A Propre new booke of Cokery, dated 1545. The tart recipe is for gooseberries but I used some blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries that I had in my refrigerator that needed to be eaten. The first thing to do is make a "shorte paest" or pie crust.

Take fine floure and a curtesy of faire water and a disshe of swete butter and a litle saffron and the yolkes of two egges and make it thin and tender as ye maie.

As you can see, there are no measurements. This practice was still a couple centuries away. And so I adapted what you see above with the help of a recipe for pie crust in The Joy of Cooking. The only major difference between what we have here and a crust that you might make at home today is the addition of saffron.



I'm not good with dough and so I'm not going to show you how it turned out. However, I will say that it was something of a patchwork.

To make a tarte of goseberies.

Take goseberies and parboyle theim in whyte wyne / claret or ale / and boyle with all a litle whyte brede / then take them vp & drawe them through a strayner as thicke as you can with the yolkes of vi egges / then ceason it vp with suger / half a dissh of butter / so bake it.

The filling begins with boiling the berries in white wine.



Once they're a mushy mess, add some bread crumbs to thicken.



Cook the stuff a bit longer and then remove from heat. I didn't "drawe them through a strainer" or use a food processor; instead I just whisked the bejeezus out of the stuff. At one point, I was standing there contemplating how to sweeten the berry blob. Should I use honey? Maple syrup? Barley malt? After re-reading the recipe, I added sugar and continued whisking. It does, after all, say to add "suger". The sweetener we all know and love was not unknown in the England of 1545 but it was pretty rare until the 17th century. This recipe was from the kitchen of a wealthy individual. Like a total maroon, I didn't read the recipe correctly when it came to the egg yolks. The recipe clearly says "yolkes of vi egges" but I was still in my post-work haze and wasn't up to Roman numerals. Ergo I added only iv yolkes. At least they were from some very large eggs so I don't think this was a mortal blow.

With all mixed, it was into the crust followed by the oven.



And here it is out of the oven.



Yeah, I know it looks like a big glob of fruit roll-ups, but understand my ability with a still camera just isn't what it should be. But I also now realize that I neglected the "half a dissh of butter". D'oh!

We'll see how it tastes…