The recipe for tardpolane, a fruit and custard tart, appears in British Library MS Additional 32085, f. 118. This manuscript dates from the late thirteenth century, making the collection of recipes in it "among the earliest full recipes from medieval Western Europe, since the earliest continental French, Danish, and Latin collections are roughly contemporary.¹

The original recipe reads:

E une autre viaunde, ke ad a noun tardpolane. Pernez flur e sucre e metez ensemble, e ke le past seit tempre oue let de alemaundes; a festes de cest past coffyns de hautesce de deus deis; e puys pernez peires e dates e alemaundes e figues e reysins e metez liqur, des epeces, e braez les ensembles, e jetez la moel de l'oef dedenz, e une pece de bon fromage tendre, ne mye trop vieuz, e des oef assez; e pus metez a fu e oignes les desus del moel de l'oef, e pus dressez.²

Hieatt and Jones' translation renders the recipe as follows:

Here is another dish, which is called tardpolane. Take and combine flour and sugar, and mix it into pastry with almond milk; make cases of this pastry two fingers in height; then take pears, dates, almonds, figs, and raisins, and put in liquid and spices and grind together;³ add egg yolk and a piece of good soft cheese, not too old, and plenty of whole eggs; then put them (the pastry cases filled with the above mixture) to cook; brush the tops with egg yolk; then serve.⁴

While this is a fairly straightforward example of mediaeval culinary writing, it does pose some difficulties. For though it enumerates the various fruits that make up the filling and decrees the precise composition of the pastry case, it also fails entirely to discuss what sort of liquid or spices are to be added to the fruit mixture, although it specifies that such things are to be included.

In the case of the liquid, a similar recipe offers some guidance. One of the variations of "tartis in applis"⁵ offered in Pleyn Delit involves the addition of a small quantity of ground almonds dissolved in an equal amount of water to the filling.⁶ Such a mixture is very close to an unstrained almond milk, and the ground almonds would be a pleasant addition to the apple tart recipe, which does not call for other nuts. In the tardpolane, which does contain almonds, an ordinary almond milk would be a reasonable choice for a liquid to moisten the filling. Cow's milk would also be a plausible choice, since the tardpolane recipe calls for both eggs and cheese and was clearly not meant as a dish for a fast day.

The call for additional liquid poses another problem -- why is it necessary? The presence of dried fruits in the filling might seem to call for a little extra moisture, but I found that the juices exuded by the fresh fruit, as well as the eggs and cheese, provided more than enough fluid, and additional liquid would have been extraneous. It is possible that the original cook intended a higher ratio of dried to fresh fruits than I have used, but I find such pies unpleasantly chewy. For the sake of flavour, I did add a couple of tablespoons of almond milk to the fruit mixture, which fulfilled the demands of the recipe without making the filling unmanageably wet.

The spices are somewhat more difficult to trace than the liquid, since similar recipes are not revealing. The original apple tart recipe in Pleyn Delit calls only for saffron. The recipe for kuskenole -- something like a fruit ravioli -- which appears in the same collection as the tardpolane, offers no precise guidance.⁷ It calls for "bon pudre" and "bons epeces" but does not specify the composition of the powder or which spices. My own guess is that something like a poudre douce blend was probably intended. The composition of poudre douce was variable, but most likely included sugar, ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg in varying proportions.⁸ Since none of these are out of place in either a modern or a mediaeval fruit tart, I have a used a modest amount of each to spice my version.

I have varied from the original version of the filling in one respect; I have added apples to the fruit filling. This was done partly for reasons of taste, as I found the flavour of the dried fruit a bit overwhelming when mixed only with pears, and wanted to offset it with some fresh apples. The similar recipes cited above also both include apples. Flaune of Almayne is a custardy variation of the apple tart recipe from Pleyn Delit, and the kuskenoles from the British Library manuscript contain all the same fruits as the tardpolane, plus apples, although without the eggs and cheese.

Notes:

1. Constance Hieatt and Robin Jones, "Two Anglo-Norman Culinary Collections Edited from British Library Manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal 12.C.xii." Speculum 61 (1986): 864
2. Ibid, 864.
3. Possibly beat together; the verb in the original is braez, which is ambiguous.
4. Hieatt and Jones, 875.
5. This recipe calls for pears and dried fruit.
6. Constance Hieatt and Sharon Butler, Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks (Toronto, 1976), 116.
7. Hieatt and Butler, xix.

For the Crust:

3 cups flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup almond milk (approximate)

Combine the flour and sugar, and add almond milk to make a manageable pastry. Allow the dough to rest for 1/2 hour so the gluten can relax and the dough will be easier to roll. Divide the dough in half, roll it out and line two 9 or 10 inch tart pans. Set aside.

For the Filling:

3/4 lb tart apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped
3/4 lb pears, preferably a firm variety, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup dried figs, chopped
1/4 cup dates, chopped
1/3 cup raisins
1/2 cup almonds, sliced or slivered
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 cup ricotta cheese
4 eggs

Combine the fresh and dried fruits with the almonds, sugar and spices and mix thoroughly or put through the coarse blade of a meat grinder, adding a little almond milk if necessary to keep the mixture moist. Then beat in 3 whole eggs, one egg white, and the cheese. Fill the prepared pastry shells and bake at 375 degrees F until the pastry is lightly browned and filling is golden, about 45 minutes to an hour. Beat the remaining egg yolk and brush the top of the tart with it during the last ten minutes of baking time.

This tart is best served warm, so the flavour of the spices comes through.

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