This entry is an explanation as to what I did with my last recipe, a Cream-Tart or une Torte a la Cresme de Pastissier, when converting it from the original in Le Pâtissier françois and its English translation The Perfect Cook. This includes recipes for a kind of pastry cream (la cresme de pastissier) and the puff pastry (paste feuilletée) base. I will then add a little more on Le Pâtissier’s author François Pierre La Varenne and specifically some of the modern - or on the way to being modern - pastry elements that show up in the book.
First, a few notes on period and language translation. I have not been able to find images from the Perfect Cook. Therefore, to reference the original recipes, I will be using images, with the text in French, from Le Pâtissier françois and there are some changes in the language since those words were printed.
The first is the long “s” – “ſ” - which is used when writing and printing many languages during the period. It looks kind of like an uncrossed “f” but often extended below the base line of text, like a “g” or a “q.” The long “s” was usually used in the middle of words, in place of the of short “s.”
Another also involved the use of “s” in French. The letter was historically replaced in a number of cases by a circumflex over the vowel that preceded it – seen like over the “e” in a word like “être.” The modern word “pâte”, which is used for pastry would have been spelled “paste.” Paste and pate and pastry – and pasta – thus all come from the same source. Another case in this book is the word modernly spelled in French and sometimes English as “crème” - meaning cream. The Old French word was cresme and this cookery book uses that spelling. It became “crême” as per above and then “crème.”
One final quick note is a symbol, still used today in German, at least: ß – called an eszett. It often represents a double “s”, as in “Preußen” or Prussia. Somewhat logically, it is essentially a long “s” and a short “s” connected. The French often employed it in La Varenne’s time. In our context it shows up sometimes in “pastißier.”
From all that, hopefully, we should be able to read the last phrase in the title of the tart recipe above as: “la cresme de pastissier” or moving at one point to “la crême de pastissier” and even more modernly “la crème de pastissier.” Giving us the name for something slightly different in fancy modern English – “crème patisserie.” One thing that makes it fun is that writers and their printers did not always follow these rules nor was there any kind of universal spelling for things. I will now for ease, try to use the modern English spellings for everything.
On to La Varenne’s recipes and what I did with them.
For the tart itself, I made it almost to the exact specifications he puts forth in the book, while I halved both the cream and the pastry instructions. The base recipe is for “une tourte de mediocre grandeur” - basically a medium tart, which worked out well for me. The only significant ingredient difference in the tart is that I could not find rosewater and it is omitted from the mix and not sprinkled over the top with sugar at the end.
La Varenne, probably because this is the first entry in a chapter, puts a lot of general tips in this recipe, which are useful but need to be sifted through. He talks about when and how to butter your pans for instance and does not get into ingredients until almost a page in. This stretches a fairly simple recipe to almost three and a half pages; these are small pages but still.
One of the first things he says is that you can use either fine paste or leaved paste (de fueilletage). I chose the second, known in modern English as puff pastry. After my past failure with period puff pastry, this turned out pretty well but as I said in my recipe a few days ago, I don’t think it was needed or the right choice for the base of this tart. It was weighed down by the filling and the layering wasted. More on the pastry and its recipe in a bit.
The rest of the ingredients are basically mixed together and include, in translation, “a quarter of a pound of fresh butter... three Eggs of Pastry men's Cream, one good handful of sugar.” He gives no real measurements for the cinnamon, currents, pine nuts, and confit or candied lemon peel so I weighed out what I thought looked good. Maybe for some, there could be less currants. I covered the tart with strips of pastry as he said but I baked it longer than he called for. The recipe says: “un quart d’heure” but going visually by the pastry, I went 25 minutes, not 15, and then sprinkled it with sugar and baked it a bit longer, as he instructed. There are more tips about pastry and currants and pine nuts added at the end.
Whether it was the right pastry for this, the puff pastry - pâte feuilletée - recipe he gave elsewhere in the book worked quite well. The base is just flour, salt and water with the butter added on top of the dough and then layered in with folds. He gives measurements for both the salt and the flour with the water just being “une ver(r)ee” - a glass. I halved the numbers he gives, just going from the fact I knew it was too much flour for one tart and even halved, it still was. The flour measurement took a little work. I did not trust the English translation which called for half a peck, so I went to the French original which called for a “demy-quart.” A French quart – different from an English quart - in the period was apparently about 0.7 Imperial gallons, so I used that to get to litres and then grams.
I followed the physical instructions almost exactly: letting it rest, rolling it out, adding the butter, folding the corners to the middle, rolling out again and repeating. I cheated by chilling things in the fridge at points and I did not heed his instruction to spread the butter initially “avec vos mains.” I sliced the butter and placed it, using my hands as little as I could, as to not melt the butter.
With the relative success and redemption of period puff pastry concluded (moral of the story: trust the French in these matters), I move to my failure and adjustments of period pastry cream. My first attempts looked like a jello-y mass with bits of raw flour in it.
Firstly, I halved the given recipe, since the tart only called for pastry cream that amounted to “environ las grosseur de trois oeufs” - about the size of three eggs. The measurements needed a bit of math again, the French version called for “une chopine” of milk and a “demy-litron” of flour. My efforts in conversion got me to amounts that were pretty similar. This was seemingly backed up by The Perfect Cook’s version which gave a half pint for both the milk and flour. This was strange because in pastry cream recipes today, there is a lot more milk than flour (or other thickener) but I went with it. You boil the milk and then add a mixture of flour and eggs to it, according to La Varenne. When I did this the first time, it instantly solidified without mixing or cooking out the flour and, even after I added butter at the end, I got what you see above.
The second time I reduced the flour substantially, making sure the flour and egg mixture was pourably thin. I added the step of tempering – taking a bit of the hot boiling milk and mixing into the flour and eggs, to try to prevent the eggs from seizing when they hit the pan. It still ended up gloopy but I was able to cook out the flour for a few minutes and when I added the butter and later the other tart ingredients, it worked.
I mentioned earlier that I came not to trust The Perfect Cook’s translation, which was very literal is some cases and off in others. There is an example that leads to my last thoughts for this week on La Varenne. The English translation has instructions “to make a March-Pain wafer.” March-pain or marchpane (and a host of other variants) are what would come to be universally spelled marzipan – a paste based on sugar and almonds. Le Pâtissier françois calls the same recipe “Pain benist” or modernly pain bénit, which is literally translated blessed bread. The recipe in both books is for this bread, which was, and rarely still is, sometimes used as a Catholic sacrament in addition to the Eucharist. There are no almonds in either version; it is not marzipan. This error is important in and of itself – it is the wrong title – but it also shows some of the modern names and dishes that La Varenne is presenting.
François Pierre La Varenne was the cook for the Marquis d'Huxelles in France and his works show one of the first conscious movements from medieval to modern cuisine. I will undoubtably talk more about this fundamental shift in future entries but the general idea was to make things taste like themselves (a cabbage dish should taste like cabbage) with complimentary herbs and a reduction of spices and superfluous ingredients.
The book we have been looking at, Le Pâtissier françois, participates less in that but does show the beginnings of another element of modern cuisine: French pastry. He uses modern terms for things that are slightly different like the pastry cream or for preparations that are somewhat removed from what the word refers to today. He has, for instance a recipe for “feuilletine” which for him is a flavoured pastry cream between two sheets of puff pastry (both historical and presently called pâte feuilletée). Feuilletine is today a dessert of layered crepes. La Varenne’s “tourte de franchipanne” includes something like modern frangipane or almond cream but adds a number of other ingredients. Others are closer: he does have an actual recipe for “Marchpane”, which is almonds and sugar with egg whites and rosewater, like some modern marzipan recipes. Another almond-based modern recipe is one for macarons; small discs are made with the ground nut, sugar and egg whites, they are baked then two are pressed together with a filling. There is no filling included in the period cookery book’s instructions but the base ingredients are the same. As a final example for today, La Varenne has instructions to make “petits choux,” small buns like the choux pastry that are filled today to make creampuffs or profiteroles.
These are not all the important steps towards modern pastry the book contains so I am sure we will revisit Le Pâtissier françois again but I will probably do something savoury for my next entry.
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