[Sca-cooks] To bake a tarte of prunes (redaction and questions)

[Tara Sersen Boroson]

Here's a wacky idea.  Can anybody fill me in on terminology here?  When
we think of "prunes" we think of dried plums, not fresh ones.  I've seen
plums called plums in other period recipes.  So, could this recipe have
been referring to dried plums, not the fresh ones that you used?  They
would have absorbed water/wine from the boiling, not contributed more
liquid of their own.  And they're certainly a much more concentrated
source of sugar, which might have helped with the sweetness and with
gelling the goop in the end.  Although you still would have had to let
it cool.

-Magdalena

Louise Smithson wrote:

> I made this tart last night to serve to my group as part of a dessert revel.  It was a primary redaction and not without it's flaws (see comments).
> To make tarte of Prunes
>>From a book of cookrye 1591
> Take prunes (plums) and wash them, then boil them fair water, cut in half a penny loaf of white bread and take them out and strain them with claret wine, season it with cinnamon, ginger and sugar and a little rosewater.  Make the paste as fine as you can and dry it and fill it and let it dry in the oven, take it out and cast on it biskets and caraways.
>
> Ingredients
> Pastry:
> 6oz all-purpose flour
> 1 1/2 oz lard
> 1 1/2 oz butter
> 1 egg yolk
> 1 pinch salt
> 2 tablespoons cold water.
> Filling:
> 2lbs plums, destoned and quartered
> 1 cup red wine
> 10 oz (by weight) fresh bread crumbs
> 8 tablespoons sugar
> 2 tablespoons rosewater
> 1 ml cinnamon
> 3 ml ginger
> Method
> Sift flour and salt together, rub in lard and butter, bring paste together with egg yolk and cold water.  Wrap and chill for 30mins.  Roll out and line a pie plate, bake blind in a 375 F oven for 15 minutes.
> Cook plums in red wine until soft, add breadcrumbs and cook for a further 5 minutes.  Remove from the heat and strain through a sieve.  Add sugar, rosewater, cinnamon and ginger (to taste).  Pour into baked pasty shell.  Return to oven at 370 F for about 30 minutes.  Strew with sugar (biskits are as far as I can determine a meringue type thing and I didn't have any so I just used sugar) and caraway seeds.
> Comments
> A little bit of a disaster, probably why we are supposed to test things at home before taking them before our group right!  The filling was very, very soupy and slopped out of the pie crust, in addition it was not very sweet.  I had about 1/3 or the mixture left and keptit in the fridge overnight.  The filling in the morning was set nice and hard.  Could this tart have been served cold?  Anyway I tried again this morning with the leftover filling, I added 2 tablespoons more sugar and 2 oz more breadcrumbs and an egg (which is an addition to the original recipe) to try and set things up a bit.  I also allowed it to bake for 45 minutes, it is a lot less sloppy now, but was this what the recipe originally meant or am I missing something.
> If anyone has any comments or suggestions I would welcome them.
> Helewyse de Birkestad