There was a bit of a celebratory meal in my house this week and one of the usual requirements for those is something chocolate. I knew chocolate was a thing, if a new and rare one, in England during the seventeenth century but also knew it was just a drink, rivalling another new import – coffee – and preceding the country’s almost wholesale adoption of tea-drinking. So, I needed to move to the eighteenth century to find something kind of like a dessert to make for the week.
The Whole Duty of a Woman, written by “A Lady” was a book first published in 1695 and went through at least eight legitimate editions by 1735. In 1737, a book using the same name came out but had a lot of very different content: for one thing, it was over 600 pages long, while the 1735 eighth edition is less than 200 pages. Later editions of the larger version were afterwards published under a different title - The Lady's Companion: Or, an Infallible Guide to the Fair Sex.
One of the additions to the new edition/book is “A Chocolate Tart,'' which is relatively simple, if very labour-intensive and finicky. The instructions call for tart of “good fine flour” but does not give a recipe for the case, so I used a seventeenth century recipe for basic paste (pastry) from a source I thought I could trust - François Pierre La Varenne’s 1653 Le Pâtissier François (and its 1656 English translation The Perfect Cook). I present both recipe adaptations and then give a few thoughts on them and on where this tart stands historically.
Recipes
“A Chocolate Tart”
from The Whole Duty of a Woman
Ingredients:
- 4 tbsp rice flour
- 8 egg yolks
- 3 cups of milk, divided
- 2 pinches of salt
- 225g (about 2 oz.) unsweetened chocolate, grated
- 1 recipe of White Fine Paste (see below) for case
- 50g (about ½ cup) powdered sugar, more to taste
Instructions:
In a medium mixing bowl, mix rice flour, egg yolks, salt, and 1 cup of the milk until well combined, all lumps having disappeared.
Transfer to a medium heavy-bottomed pot, and place on low heat.
Watch your mixture very carefully, stirring frequently until it starts to thicken. This may take a while but if the heat is too high or you leave it alone too long, the eggs will scramble almost instantly.
When you start to see it thicken, add some more of the milk a little at a time, stirring constantly. I alternated between a whisk and a spatula to get in the edges of the pot.
Continue to add milk until the remaining 2 cups of milk has been used up.
Taste to make sure flour and eggs are cooked out. The mixture should still be a liquid.
Add your grated chocolate, again stirring constantly until well combined. You should now have a thick cream. Set aside to cool.
Preheat your oven to 205°C (about 400°F).
Roll out your pastry to the size of your tart pan.
Roll onto your rolling pin and unroll onto the pan. Push into the bottom and sides of the pan and then trim the edges.
When cool, spoon your chocolate cream into the tart case, leaving some room at the top as it will rise a little when it bakes. Smooth out with a knife or spatula.
Bake in the middle of the oven until the cream is set and solid and the pastry is crisp and golden, about 35 minutes.
Remove from the oven and scatter powdered sugar evenly over the baked chocolate.
Carefully, move a rack to the top shelf of your oven and turn it to its highest broil setting.
Place the sugared tart on the top shelf, just below the element.
Watching it carefully, broil until sugar has melted and caramelised but try to avoid burning the edges of the pastry case – about a minute. If you have access to a culinary blowtorch, this will make melting the sugar more precise.
Serve, with cream if desired.
“La paste blance fine pour la croute des tartes”
“White fine Paste or Dough for crust for Tarts”
Ingredients
- 150g (about a cup and a tbsp) flour
- 60g (about 5 tbsp) butter
- 2 pinches of salt
- Just enough water to make a smooth dough (I ended up with 3 tbsp)
Instructions:
On a large clean work surface make a mound of your flour and form a well in it.
Breaking up your butter with your hands, drop the pieces in the well.
Add your salt to the butter.
With the tips of your fingers work the butter into the flour until it all resembles course breadcrumbs.
Form another well and add your water a tablespoon at a time until you can form a dough.
Knead until smooth and firm. Set aside.
Notes on Adaption and History:
There was a bit of trial and error in these recipes, but I was very pleased with the result, so I present my adaptions as they worked for me.
I will touch on the pastry recipe first as it is sort of simpler and has less historical context. As I said, I picked one from La Varenne because he had provided me good pastry instructions in the past. In the end, it was very good and served its purpose but the conversion from a huge recipe in historical French was a bit of an interesting experience, though the English translation was a little help.
The instructions are actually two recipes, one a minor adaption of other. In Le Pâtissier françois, there is first a recipe for “Paste blanche pour faire de gros pastez” – translated as “White paste or dough to make great pyes.” That recipe provides most of the ingredients and method but the next set of instructions in the book are to make “la paste blanche fine, pour…la croute des tartes” – fine white paste for (among many other things) the crust of tarts. It refers to the previous paste recipe but “au lieu de mettre seulement deux livres de beurre…on y mettra trois livres” – you simply replace the 2 (approximate) pounds of butter with 3 pounds. There is a lot of general instructions given to pastry chefs which makes the recipes as long as they are.
The measurements, their names and size proved a challenge. The French original calls for a demy boisseau of flour; a “boisseau” is similar to the English “bushel” and was supposed to equal about 13 litres. The “livres” for the butter are like English pounds but not quite equal or even standard within France itself. It calls for “trois onces” of salt which again is close to English ounces. Finally, it called for “un demy septier” of water; a “septier” could mean at least a couple different measures: one was similar to a pint and the other almost 8 litres. Greatly reduced like the other ingredients to make one tart case, one type of septier meant too little water and the other way too much. As such, I just added enough to make a dough.
Overall, I reduced La Varenne’s measurements by a factor of 25 for the flour and butter and much more for the salt.
To fill the tart pan I had and its pastry case, I found I needed to double the quantities provided in the chocolate tart recipe in The Whole Duty of a Woman. The salt, milk and chocolate amounts are not specified so they were determined by experience and taste. 3 cups does seem more than “a little milk” but, as I said, it worked.
When the author writes: “don’t let them curdle” it is pertinent advice; the initial stages require a lot of attention.
Instead of glazing the sugar with a "red hot Fire-shovel," I broiled it.
The rice flour is an interesting ingredient for the time. It does not appear a lot in English recipes before this early to mid-eighteenth-century period. The slight exception to this is Robert May who mentions it at least eight times in The Accomplisht Cook (1660). By 1733, it is well known enough that Vincent La Chapelle, in a book called The Modern Cook, writes: “All sort of Creams are more delicate with Rice Flour, than with common Flour only.”
With no sugar in the initial mix of the chocolate cream, this tart, for me, is an enjoyable contrast of bitter and savoury flavours with what would now be called a brûlé topping. This makes for the taste of a very modern dessert – not overly sweet with other notes - but it also probably comes from a specific historic context.
Chocolate is from the Americas originally and was consumed there as a drink that was not usually sweetened. I will probably write a supplement on a bit of the early history of England’s relationship with the drink. However, now it is just important to understand it was a known, if exotic, luxury through the middle and end of the seventeenth century. It seemingly does not begin showing up in recipes until the 1720s.
I was actually in a hurry when I picked the recipe; there are slightly earlier and more complex recipes, as well as sweeter ones. I probably would have picked one of those other ones if I had more time but am glad I ended up with the one I did. In addition to the difference in flavours I mentioned before, there is crispness on top with the caramelised sugar against the brownie-like texture of the cooked chocolate cream. It is one of my favourite historical recipes I have tried, though it might also be because I overcame a few hurdles to get there in the end.
I will cover a few of the other period versions of chocolate tarts in my supplement and will probably do another simple Lent recipe next week.
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