Sometimes preparations are termed patties which may
correspond somewhat in shape, but do not answer the rest
of the definition. Thus, some egg and ham patties currently
described in books are really croustades — namely, cup-
shaped pieces of fried bread, with a mince of ham steeped in
broivn sauce in the cup, each being covered with a poached
egg. This is a very elegant ancient Italian preparation, but
should be placed with the croustades.
Most ragouts f ricassees, and appertaining sauces, which
are placed in raised pates, are termed entrees in the French
kitchen ; they are given surnames mostly derived from the
sauce, but for many surnames the fancy of some cook or
other is the only warranty. Such should not be retained,
but make room for descriptions derived from essential quali-
ties. Amongst favourite ragouts for vol-au-vents are those
of calj’s brain, sioeetbrcad, quenelles of foiol, mushrooms and
572
THE SPIRIT OF COOkERY
truffles, cocks’ combs and kernels (d la Financiere), turbot
toith bdchamel, salmon with ravigote, cod loith bechamel and
Parmesan, salt cod, and others.
It is reported that Taillevaut, the master cook of the
French King Charles V., had said that tourte signiiied at
one time a household loaf of bread in a round form, that
this name was afterwards given to delicate pastry, and that
by corruption it was called tart in certain provinces. (We
do not think it impossible that the French tourte might be
derived from tourette, ‘ a little tower,’ to the shape of which
the French loaf of Taillevant would correspond.) The
word tart is in England not rarely misapplied to fruit pies ;
while fruit tarts should have the fruit on the top and
within a rim of paste, to recall its evolution from the
Eoman twisted ring called torta. In Germany Torte means
a delicate cake of a round form, mostly without fruit or
meat, patronized by ladies at coffee-parties. The applica-
tion of the word tourte to paste-cases of an edible nature
containing prepared meat, ragouts, and fricassees, is there-
fore exclusively French. It also follows that a tourte cannot
be very different from a^ pdti or vol-au-vent ; if difference there
be, it is probably in the kind of dough employed for the
construction of the case. A pasty-case was not necessarily
edible, mostly uneatable ; a vol-aurvent case is certainl)’
intended to be eaten with its contents ; it is always made
of 2Mste. The tourte-case is made of some dough more
delicate than the paste of the pate, and less rich than that
of the vol-au-vent — namely, what old English cooks called
tart paste (Simpson, loc. cit., p. 508), commonly called
short paste. The name tourte seems to disappear with the
thing in the general decadence of cookery ; neither word
nor thing occurs in the French cookery-book of Gouffe, or in
the German one of Eottenhbfer. The latter gives, how-
ever, twenty-eight recipes for Torteii of the German kind.
Francatelli treated vol-au-vents and tourtes as identical.
riMBALLS AND THEIR CONTENTS
573
Page 361
Presented as published in 1895. Historical recipes may not meet modern food-safety standards. Cook from the modern interpretation, not the original instructions.
AI-modernized reading of the original text
Sometimes preparations are termed patties which may correspond somewhat in shape, but do not answer the rest of the definition. Thus, some egg and ham patties currently described in books are really croustades — namely, cupshaped pieces of fried bread, with a mince of ham steeped in brown sauce in the cup, each being covered with a poached egg. This is a very elegant ancient Italian preparation, but should be placed with the croustades.
Most ragouts f ricassees, and appertaining sauces, which
are placed in raised pates, are termed entrees in the French kitchen ; they are given surnames mostly derived from the sauce, but for many surnames the fancy of some cook or other is the only warranty. Such should not be retained, but make room for descriptions derived from essential qualities. Amongst favourite ragouts for vol-au-vents are those of calj’s brain, sweetbread, quenelles of foiol, mushrooms and
truffles, cocks’ combs and kernels (d la Financiere), turbot with béchamel, salmon with ravigote, cod with bechamel and Parmesan, salt cod, and others.
It is reported that Taillevaut, the master cook of the French King Charles V., had said that tourte signified at one time a household loaf of bread in a round form, that this name was afterwards given to delicate pastry, and that by corruption it was called tart in certain provinces. (We do not think it impossible that the French tourte might be derived from tourette, ‘ a little tower,’ to the shape of which the French loaf of Taillevant would correspond.) The word tart is in England not rarely misapplied to fruit pies ; while fruit tarts should have the fruit on the top and within a rim of paste, to recall its evolution from the Roman twisted ring called torta. In Germany Torte means a delicate cake of a round form, mostly without fruit or meat, patronized by ladies at coffee-parties. The application of the word tourte to paste-cases of an edible nature containing prepared meat, ragouts, and fricassees, is therefore exclusively French. It also follows that a tourte cannot be very different from a^ pdti or vol-au-vent ; if difference there be, it is probably in the kind of dough employed for the construction of the case. A pasty-case was not necessarily edible, mostly uneatable ; a vol-aurvent case is certainly intended to be eaten with its contents ; it is always made of paste. The tourte-case is made of some dough more delicate than the paste of the pate, and less rich than that of the vol-au-vent — namely, what old English cooks called tart paste (Simpson, loc. cit., p. 508), commonly called short paste. The name tourte seems to disappear with the thing in the general decadence of cookery ; neither word nor thing occurs in the French cookery-book of Gouffe, or in the German one of Rottenhöfer. The latter gives, however, twenty-eight recipes for Torteii of the German kind. Francatelli treated vol-au-vents and tourtes as identical.
riMBALLS AND THEIR CONTENTS