Renaissance Tart Recipes

"The Queen Of Hearts, She Baked Some Tarts..." Perhaps Using These Renaissance Tart Recipes

You will love trying these Renaissance tart recipes. Tarts and the much smaller sweet tarts, sometimes called chewettes, were usually made without an upper crust, as distinguished from a pie; and they often contained preserved fruits, almonds, citrus peel, and even minced meats.

They were richer and chewier than today's tarts, spiced, highly sweetened with sugar or honey, and sometimes thickened with almond milk while baking. Their crusts were crimped around the edges and for festive occasions, they were decorated with comfit candies and had flavored sugars strewn over them. Violet and rose flavored sugars were the favorites, and they were colored, accordingly.

The Queen Of Hearts

To make an Almond Tart

Take a Quart of Cream, and when it boils, put in half a pound of fweet Almonds blanched and beaten with Rofewater, boil them together till it be thick, always ftirring it for fear it burn, then when it is cold, put in a little raw Cream, the yolks of twelve Eggs, and fome beaten Spice, fome Candied Citron Pill and Eringo Roots fliced, with as much fine Sugar as will fweeten it, then fill your Tart and bake it, and ftick it with Almonds blanched, and fome Citron Pill, and ftrew on fome fmall French Comfits of feveral colours, and garnifh your Difh with Almonds blanched, and prferved Barberries.

To make Tarts of Pippins (Apples)

Having fome Puff-Paft ready in a Difh or Pan, lay in fome preferved Pippins which have Orange Pill in them, and the Juice of Orange or Limon, fo clofe them and bake them a little.

To make a brave Tart of feveral Sweet-Meats

Take fome Puff-pafte, and roule it very thin, and lay it in the bottom of your baking-pan, then lay in a Lay of preferved Rasberries, then fome more Pafte very thin to cover them, then fome Currans preferved, and then a Sheet of Pafte to cover them, then Cherries, and another Sheet to cover them, then any white Sweet-Meat, as Pippins, white Plumbs, or Grapes; fo lid it with Puff-pafte, cut in fome pretty Fancy to fhew the Fruit, then bake it, and ftick it full of Candied Pills, and ferve it in cold.

To make Puffe-Pafte

This is an early Renaissance recipe for making puff paste.

Take a quart of the fineft Flower, the Whites of three Eggs, and the Yolks of two, and a little cold water, make it into a perfect Pafte, then roul it abroad thin, then lay on little bits of Butter, and fold it over again, then drive it abroad again, and lay on more Butter, and then fold it over, and fo do ten times, make it up for your ufe, and put your Fruit or Meat therein and bake it.