Fruit Tarte

"eat, drink and be merry"

As a child I formed a love for history, it was by far my favourite lesson in school and I longed for the days when it was on the timetable. My fascination with history largely revolved around time periods like the Tudors so clearly this week, my Tudor week, has been my favourite thus far. Once while I was in primary school we had a ‘Tudor day.’ The whole of my year came in dressed like Tudors and we spent the day doing craft, sport and eating as though we lived in that era. This memory, which is hazy at best, is something I want to recreate here. The Tudor period was a time when food started to become more than just eating to survive. Cookbooks began regulat circulation. The water, still unclean, meant it was still unfit for consumption therefore wine/ale was the most popular tipple. Most importantly more fruit trees were cultivated and more bee hives kept. All this in mind my Tudor dish is-Fruit Tarte.

      Unlike the last two dishes this sounds slightly more appealing. Whereas pottage and hodgepodge were dishes created on the basic food available and also to give more sustenance and energy this is something new. Food has, finally, become more about aesthetics and taste. Fruit is more widely available and late in the era exotic fruits also began to arrive in England. The most interesting thing I discovered is fruit tarte is not actually a tart as we would expect it to be. Anyway here’s the recipe I used to make it;

The Good Huswifes Jewell
To Make All Maner of Fruit Tarte.
ou must boyle your fruite, whether it be apple, cherrie, peach, damson, peare, Mulberie, or codling, in faire water, and when they be boyled inough, put them into a bowle, and bruse them with a Ladle, and when they be colde, straine them, and put in red wine or Claret wine, and so season it with suger, sinamon and ginger.

A relatively simple recipe, here is how I interpreted it;
Ingredients

Fruit (pretty much any type)
Wine
Sugar/ suger
Cinnamon/ sinamon
Ginger


1.Boil the chosen fruit until soft.
2.Then bruise the fruit and leave it to cool.
3.Strain off any excess juices and add the wine, sugar, cinnamon and ginger

I was expecting a pastry dish to be honest, and was a little disappointed when it failed to deliver my expectations. I chose pears as my fruit, partly because another assignment I’m working on revolves around it. Other than the lack of pastry it looked edible and reminded me a lot of my grans stewed pears. It tasted better than I expected as well. For such a simple recipe it was surprisingly tasty. Described as “refreshing” I would definitely confirm this as a hit.

I really enjoyed this dish. The cooking required little effort and the end result was deliciously refreshing. I think I will make it again. I can just picture eating fruit tarte and drinking wine in the sunshine. A true Tudor tribute.