White Tart
Ingredients
Flour
Butter
Water
Milk
Orange Juice
Sugar
White Vinegar
Ground Ginger
Egg Whites
Rose Water
Salt
Gum Arabic
Yellow Dye #5
The original recipe below is from Maestro Martino's Libro de arte coquinaria. The Libro de arte coquinaria was written in the mid-fifteenth century(1) and it is the source(2) for the earliest printed cookbook, Platina's De Honesta Voluptate. This original recipe was reprinted in The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy(3).
Torta bianca. Piglia una libra et meza di bono cascio frescho, et taglialo menuto, et pistalo molto bene, et piglia dodici o quindici albume o bianchi d'ova, et macinali molto bene con questo cascio, agiogendovi meza libra di zuccharo, et meza oncia di zenzevero del pi� bincho che possi havere, similemente meza libra di strutto di porcho bello et biancho, o in loco di strutto altretanto botiro bono et frescho, item de lo lacte competentemente, quanto basti, che ser� assai un terzo di bocchale. Poi farrai la pasta overo crosta in la padella, sottile come vole esere, et mectiraila a cocere dandoli il focho a bell'agio di sotto et di sopra; et farai che sia di sopra un pocho colorita per el caldo del focho; et quando ti pare cotta, cacciala fore de la padella, et di sopra vi metterai del auccharo fino et di bona acqua rosata.
This recipe was then translated(4) by the authors of The Medieval Kitchen :
White tart. Take a libra and a half of good fresh cheese and cut it up fine, and pound it very well; take twelve or fifteen egg whites and blend them very well with this cheese, adding half a libra of sugar and half an oncia of the whitest ginger you can find, as well as a half libra of good, white pork lard, or instead of lard, good, fresh butter, and some milk, as much as needed; this will be a good third of a boccale. Then make the pastry, or crust, [put it] into the pan, as thin as it ought to be, and cook it nicely with fire both below and above; and make sure that the top is a little colored from the heat of the fire; and when it seems cooked, remove it from the pan and put fine sugar and good rose water on top.
I used this translation when I created my own redaction of the recipe. My redaction is broken into three groups: the fresh cheese used in the filling, the pastry dough for the crust, and the filling and tart.
For the fresh cheese, I used one of the most basic methods of cheese-making. The milk is heated and then an acid is added to it to make the milk curdle. The milk is then cooled and the whey is strained out, leaving only the cheese behind.
Below are the ingredients and instructions to make the 10 ounces of fresh cheese needed in the White Tart:
1/2 gallon whole milk
1 and a 1/2 cups orange juice
1 and a half tablespoons white vinegar
Slowly heat the milk in a large pot to 190 degrees F, slowly stirring all the while. When the milk has reached the correct temperature, turn off the heat and stir in the orange juice and white vinegar. Curds should start to form immediately. Let the mixture sit and cool until the temperature is 100 degrees F (this takes about an hour). Drain the whey and curds through cheesecloth and then let the curds continue to drain for an hour. I tie the cheesecloth closed around the curds and then hang this bag over a pot to let gravity force the remaining moisture out. Once the curds are completely drained, put the cheese in the refrigerator to keep cool until needed.
This makes a citrus-flavored cheese. More commonly in fresh cheese recipes, lemon juice or white vinegar would be used instead of orange juice. However, in my tests, the lemon juice overpowered the rose water in the tart and the white vinegar didn't do much for the flavor at all. The orange juice, however, blended nicely with the rose water and the sweetness of the sugar. I added a little white vinegar to the orange juice because in period oranges were more bitter than they are today and I wanted to add a touch of sharpness to the flavor.
The recipe calls for pastry dough but period recipes for pastry dough are exceedingly rare. Pastry dough was just one of those things that a cook knew how to make and they made it to their own preferences. For the pastry dough I took a modern pastry dough recipe from The Medieval Kitchen(5) that uses common period ingredients and I made a variation on it.
1 and 3/4 cups cold pastry flour
9 tablespoons cold butter
1/3 cup cold water
1 scant teaspoon salt
If you don't have pastry flour on hand, you can make pastry flour from all-purpose flour and cake flour. To make 2 cups of pastry flour you need to sift together 1 and 1/3 cups of all-purpose flour and 2/3 cup of cake flour.
It is very important that all of the ingredients be cold. The crust ends up flaky when the butter is melted by the heat of the oven, not if it melts in the making of the dough. The dough should have streaks of butter and bits of butter throughout it when you're done.
Cut the butter into small chunks and mix it in with the pastry flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. You can use a fork to do this or knives or even your hands (being careful not to have the butter melt) but I prefer to use a food processor. Dissolve the salt in the water and mix the salt water into the flour and butter. You can use your hands (once again being careful about melting the butter) or a food processor to mix the dough but the mixing only needs to continue until the dough just sticks together. Form the dough into a thick disk, wrap it in plastic wrap, and leave it to rest in the refrigerator for at least two hours. This dough also freezes quite well if you want to make it ahead.
For the tart you will need the pastry dough you made earlier as well as the fresh cheese for the filling. What follows is my redaction of the translated recipe.
Filling
10 ounces fresh cheese
6 egg whites, lightly beaten
1/2 to 2/3 cup sugar
8 tablespoons butter, softened
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup whole milk
pinch of salt
Topping and Decoration
1 teaspoon rose water
1 tablespoon sugar
Yellow gum arabic flakes
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Roll out the dough and line a tart pan with it. Line the pastry and pan with aluminum foil and add dried beans or pie weights to the pan to keep the dough from rising. Bake the dough in the 425 degree F oven for 10 minutes. Remove the weights and foil and bake the crust for another 5 minutes. Then remove the pan from the oven and let it cool while lowering the oven heat to 375 degree F.
To make the filling, cream the sugar, butter, ginger, salt, and fresh cheese together. I use a food processor to do this. Mix in the lightly beaten egg whites. Beat in the milk.
Pour the filling into the partially baked shell and bake at 375 degree F for 15 minutes. After the 15 minutes has elapsed, cover the filling and pan with a sheet of aluminum foil (use toothpicks to keep the foil from touching the filling) and bake for another 45 minutes. The aluminum foil keeps the filling from browning too much. The filling should have a solid but spongy texture when done.
Sprinkle the rose water and then the sugar over the top and decorate as you like.
I have left the amount of sugar in the filling to your own personal discretion. When Martino did this original recipe, "...sugar is being dumped into the mixing bowl for just about every dish almost as if it were salt...The taste of the times...was definitely sweet."(6) But although our medieval ancestors might have liked the sweetness, it is sometimes too much for our modern palates. Therefore the exact amount to be included in the filling I leave to your own personal preference.
I have also used less rose water than was probably used in period. One teaspoon of rose water isn't very much. Unfortunately modern people associate the smell and taste of rose water to bath products and not to edible items and so to accommodate these expectations and palates I only use enough to give a hint of the taste and scent.
I had originally planned to decorate the white tart with a sunburst design made from gold dust. Edible gold, both in gold leaf and gold dust forms, was commonly used as a decoration in medieval and renaissance times(7)(8) and since the white tart by itself is fairly plain, I thought it needed decoration. Unfortunately I was unable to locate edible gold dust. So instead I substituted the yellow gum arabic flakes. This isn't completely an out of period substitution however as gums mixed with sugars and colorants were also used in period, particularly with sugar paste(9).
FOOTNOTES
1. Italian Collections at the Library of Congress. Published at http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/coll/ital.html. p.1-2.
2. Italian Collections at the Library of Congress. Published at http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/coll/ital.html. p.2.
3. Redon, Sabban, and Serventi. The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy. The University of Chicago Press. 1998. p. 245.
4. Redon. p. 157-158.
5. Redon. p. 225.
6. Scully, D. Eleanor and Scully, Terence. Early French Cookery. The University of Michigan Press. 1995. p. 25.
7. Scully. p. 24.
8. Pine Nut Candy. Published at http://www.godecookery.com/friends/frec23.htm. p. 1.
9. Fleming, Elise. Sugar Paste: A Cook's "Play Dough". Published at http://www.netcolony.com/arts/mkcooks/sugarpasteacooksplaydough.html. p. 1.
REFERENCES
The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, by Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi, Chicago, United States of America, University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Italian Collections at the Library of Congress. Published at http://www.loc.gov/rr/european/coll/ital.html.
Early French Cookery, by D. Eleanor Scully and Terence Scully, United States of America, The University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Pine Nut Candy. Published at http://www.godecookery.com/friends/frec23.htm.
Sugar Paste: A Cook's "Play Dough" by Elise Fleming. Published at http://www.netcolony.com/arts/mkcooks/sugarpasteacooksplaydough.html.