[Sca-cooks] tart crusts

[Terry Decker]

The painting is Peasant's Wedding by Peter Bruegel the Elder.

I would suggest looking at the illustrations of cooking pans from Scappi's
Opera.  At least some of them are webbed with a link through Cindy Renfrow's
site.

Bear

>I wish I could remember the title of the painting or the artist.  No
>tart pans or other dishes were present in the painting, only several
>tarts being carried on a serving board by two men.  The tarts were
>round with fairly straight sides, and filled approximately to the top
>edge of the crust.  What makes me suspect that they were baked in a pan
>was that they were quite uniform in shape and size, and the crusts
>didn't appear to be all that thick.  That combined with the way the
>custardes I made this weekend turned out suggests to me that they could
>have been made in a similar way.
>
>Yes, this is indeed just supposition on my part, but throughout the
>fourteenth and fifteenth centuries pie makers in Europe made a
>transition from the thick walled, inedible, free-standing pie crusts to
>thin walled, short crust tarts cooked in pans.  I would be very
>surprised if there weren't many intermediate forms.
>
>
>- Doc