[Sca-cooks] tart crusts

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> 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.
>
> By "tart pan" I mean a flat bottomed pan with short sides that are
> steeply sloped or even vertical.  Most modern tart pans I've seen have
> fluted sides, but I have no idea if that form dates back prior to 1600
> CE.
>
> As for whether tarts were cooked in pans rather than free standing on a
> flat tray, there is evidence to show that it was done in some cases.
>
>  From "Forme of Cury" (Curye on Inglish) - 14th C.
> "172 Tartee." ... "and make a crust in a trap, & do (th)e fars (th)erin
> ...."
> "173 Tart in ymbre day." ... "bake it in a trap, & serue it forth."
> "174 Tart de Bry.  Take a crust ynch depe in a trap." ... "Do it in a
> trap; bake it & serue it forth."
> "178 Tartes of fysshe." ... "Make a crust in a trap as bifore, and bake
> ith (th)erin, and serue it forth."
> "179 Sambocade. Take and make a crust in a trap & take ...."
>
> Modern pies can sometimes be removed from their pans and still keep
> their shape - it depends a lot on the filling and how well cooked the
> crust is.  If you cooked a quiche-like pie in a tart pan (or perhaps a
> shallow cake pan) and did not use any shortening in the crust, you
> should be able to remove the cooled pie from the pan and have it hold
> its shape.  However, unlike a tart that was made without a pan, such a
> tart would be able to have a crust of the same thickness as that in
> modern pies, and the crust would be edible as well.
>
> - Doc

Hey, love, any chance you might be able to find the pic, or similar pix to
what you're suspecting? I'm thinking it might be interesting to try to
reproduce a tarte pan or two- fuctional if not necessarily 100" a
reproduction of an original.

Phlip, thinking, hammer in hand....

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....