Paste for Stringing Tartlets
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the paste
Cut puff paste into pieces.
Mix with flour and enough cold water to achieve moderate stiffness.
Mould the mixture with your hands until it forms a fine thread.
Shape and place
Roll out a piece of the paste to 3 inches long and 2 inches wide.
Cut it into slips, draw them out singly, and place them across the tarts in any design, crossing and re-crossing them.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Puff paste
- Its layers of fat and dough puff into a flaky, crisp texture when baked.
- Flour
- Adds body and firmness so the paste holds its thread shape without sagging.
- Cold water
- Binds the flour and paste into a workable dough that can be moulded.
The step that matters
Mixing to moderate stiffness. Too much water makes the paste slack, so threads lose their shape; too little makes it crumbly and hard to draw out. Stiffness decides whether the threads hold their design in the oven.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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