Tarts are small shells with fruit in them.
Pies may be made with any sort of paste. It is a fault to roll it out too thin; for if it has not sufficient substance, it will, when baked, be dry and tasteless. For a pie, divide the paste into two sheets; spread one of them over the bottom and sides of a deep dish well buttered. Next put in the fruit or other ingredients, (heaping it higher in the centre,) and then place the other sheet of paste on the top as a lid or cover; pressing the edges closely down, and afterwards crimping or notching them with a sharp small knife.
In making pies of juicy fruit, it is well to put on the centre of the under crust a common tea-cup, laying the fruit round it and over it. The juice will collect under the cup, and not be liable to run out from between the edges. There should be plenty of sugar strewed among the fruit as you put it into the pie.
Preserves should never be put into covered pies. The proper way is to lay them in baked shells.
All pies are best the day they are baked. If kept twenty-four hours the paste falls and becomes comparatively hard, heavy, and unwholesome. If the fruit is not ripe, it should be stewed with sugar, and then allowed to get cold before it is put into the pie. If put in warm it will make the paste heavy. With fruit pies always have a sugar dish on the table, in case they should not be found sweet enough.
Cut up half a pound of butter, and put it into a sauce-pan with three quarters of a pint of water; cover it, and set it on hot coals. Have ready in a pan two pounds of sifted flour; make a hole in the middle of it, pour in the melted butter as soon as it boils, and then with a spoon gradually mix in the flour. When it is well mixed, knead it with your hands into a stiff dough. Sprinkle your paste-board with flour, lay the dough upon it, and continue to knead it with your hands till it no longer sticks to them, and is quite light. Then let it stand an hour to cool. Cut off pieces for the bottom and top; roll them out thick, and roll out a long piece for the sides or walls of the pie, which you must fix on the bottom so as to stand up all round; cement them together with white of egg, pinching and closing them firmly. Then put in the ingredients of your pie, (which should be venison, game, or poultry,) and lay on the lid or top crust, pinching the edges closely together. You may ornament the sides and top with leaves or flowers of paste, shaped with a tin cutter, and notch or scollop the edges handsomely. Before you set it in the oven glaze it all over with white of egg. Bake it four hours. These pies are always eaten cold, and in winter will keep two or three weeks, if the air is carefully excluded from them; and they may be carried to a considerable distance.
Roll out a sufficient quantity of the best puff paste, or sugar paste; and with oval or circular cutters, cut it out into seven or eight pieces of different sizes; stamping the middle of each with the cutter you intend using for the next. Bake them all separately, and when they are cool, place them on a dish in a pyramid, (gradually diminishing in size,) the largest piece at the bottom, and the smallest at the top. Take various preserved fruits, and lay some of the largest on the lower piece of paste; on the next place fruit that is rather smaller; and so on till you finish at the top with the smallest sweetmeats you have. The upper one may be not so large as a half-dollar, containing only a single raspberry or strawberry.