To make different sorts of tarts.
IF you bake in tin-patties, butter them, and you must put a little crust all over, because of the taking them out; it in china, or glass, no crust but the top one. Lay fine sugar at the bottom, then your plums, cherries, or any other sort of fruit, and sugar at top; then put on your lid, and bake them in a slack oven. Mince pies must be baked in tin-patties, because taking them out, and puff-paste is best for them. All sweet tarts the beaten crust is best; but as you fancy. You have the receipt for the crust in this chapter. Apple, pear, apricot, &c. make thus; apples and pears, pear them, cut them into quarters, and core them; cut the quarters across again, set them on in a sauce-pan with just as much water as will barely cover them, let them simmer on a slow fire just till the fruit is tender; put a good piece of lemon-peel in the water with the fruit, and a little sugar at top; that you must put in at your discretion. Pour over each tart a tea-spoonful of lemon-juice, and three tea-spoonfuls of the liquor they were boiled in; put on your lid, and bake them in a slack oven. Apricots do the same way only do not use lemon.
As to preserved tarts, only lay in your preserved fruit, and put a very thin crust at top, and let them be baked as little as possible; but if you would make them very nice, have a large patty, the size you would have your tart. Make your sugar crust, roll it as thick as a halfpenny; then butter your patties, and cover it. Shape your upper crust on a hollow thing on purpose, the size of your patty, and mark it with a marking-iron for that purpose, in what shape you please, to be hollow and open to see the fruit through; then bake your crust in a very slack oven not to discolour it, but to have it crisp. When the crust is cold, very carefully take it out, and fill it with what fruit you please, lay on the lid, and it is done; therefore if the tart is not eat, your sweetmeat is not the worse, and it looks genteel.
Paste for tarts.
ONE pound of flour, three quarters of a pound of butter; mix up together, and beat well with a rolling-pin.
Another paste for tarts.
HALF a pound of butter, half a pound of flour, and half a pound of sugar; mix it well together, and beat it with a rolling-pin well, then roll it out thin.
