Name: Cherry Tart
Ingredients: 1½ lbs cherries; 2 tablespoons moist sugar; ½ lb short crust pastry

Cherry Tart

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

1½ lbs cherries
2 tablespoons moist sugar
½ lb short crust pastry

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Remove the stalks from the cherries and place them in a deep pie dish with the sugar and a small cup upside down in the center.
Make a short crust pastry with ½ lb of flour and form a border around the edge of the dish.

Bake and serve

Cover the cherries with the pastry and decorate the edges.
Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 40 minutes.
Sprinkle finely sifted sugar over the tart and serve hot or cold.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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

Cherries: Provide the fruit filling, releasing juice that becomes the tart's syrupy base as it bakes.
Moist sugar: Sweetens the cherries and helps draw out their juice to form a syrup.
Short crust pastry: Forms the rich, crisp, golden crust that encloses the fruit filling.

“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.