Name: Plum & Pear Tart - Renaissance Cake Recipe
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 30 min
Ingredients: 6 damson plums; 2 pears; 250 ml red wine/ claret/ madeira wine; 50 g white bread crumbs; 3 egg yolks; 30 g butter; pinch of fine salt; 1/4 tsp cinnamon (or mixed spice); 3/4 cup plain - cake white flour; 1 tsp water; 6 safron threads ((optional)); 1 egg yolk; 60 g unsalted butter

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Today’s historic recipe is for Plum & Pear Tart and it’s from the Renaissance period.

The filling with plums and pears is easy enough to make and you have an option with the short crust pastry. You can make your own using my recipe or you can even buy one in the shop (I’m not judging!).

The Plum & Pear tart is delicious as it is, but it’s even better if you serve it with a good dollop of vanilla ice cream or cream. Whilst, that’s not very authentic, it’s also absolutely divine!

This recipe & me

I’ve always loved history, visiting castles and places where you can learn about the connections between things. Because history is about connections. It’s not about important dates, that you can just rumble through when you have a history test (oh, yes, I’ve been there!), but it’s about the little things, the in-between events, people and resources.

This is why I find, food history so fascinating. In the past, most common folks didn’t have access to all the different types of food and only the riches could afford luxuries like sweet mixed spices, sugar or chocolate.

Sometimes, it’s nice to go back and re-create a recipe, that is simple, yet delicious to taste, knowing that people would have eaten it in 16 century.

At such time, I feel like I’m connected with the past, although knowing my luck I would have been born as a poor peasant and wouldn’t probably get the chance to taste anything like that!

I think it’s the unusual combination of plums and pears that made me try this recipe, because you don’t always see that. I love that the original recipe (like all the recipes in old cookery books) doesn’t have any measurements or oven temperatures.

There is a simple explanation, as neither of those things was available in those days. I’ve tried my best to convert the recipe for modern measurements, but feel free to change the proportions of the plums or pears as you like.

MORE SWEET CAKE RECIPES

Ingredients & possible substitutions

Plums

Any kind of plums are fine for this recipe, but the more ripen and flavoursome they are the better. The tart flavour really depends on the flavour of the fruit (both the plums and the pears).

MORE RECIPES WITH PLUMS

Plum Scones >>

Pears

I prefer the green, softer, juicier types of pears, that have more flavour than the light yellow ones.

MORE RECIPES WITH PEARS

Desert wine

You will need quite a bit of red wine for this recipe (1/2 pint or 250 ml), so I’ll leave it up to your budget to decide which one to get. The stronger flavour you get the better flavour the tart will have.

Madeira or claret is perfect for this recipe, but it’s quite pricey. If you have a few different red wines at home already, you can also mix them together.

Bread crumbs

You can buy bread crumbs in most supermarkets, or you can easily make them at home. Simply leave out some white bread to dry and then crumble it. You can also use a food processor to do this.

If you are in hurry and don’t have bread crumbs ready, you can speed up the bread drying process in the oven (as you are preheating the oven for the tart baking). Even if the bread crumbs are not completely dry, it’s better to use them, then omit them altogether.

Egg yolks

You’ll only need egg yolks for this recipe, but you can use egg whites for making a breakfast omelette.

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is the easiest spice to use with this recipe, but you can also use homemade mixed spice or go with the seasons and use for example Gingerbread Mix spice or Stollen Mixed Spice for this recipe.

The short crust pastry ingredients (if you don’t have a ready made one from a shop)

plain – cake white flour
water
safron threads (optional)
egg yolk
unsalted butter

How to make Plum & Pear Tart Recipe

To make the filling

Prepare the fruit by peeling it and removing the pits and seeds.

Chop the fruit into smaller chunks.

Add the fruit to a medium size saucepan and cover it with your choice of red vine (or fortified wine). Bring to a simmering boil to soften the fruit.

Add the bread crumbs, but only to thicken the mixture a little. Don’t use all of them if the mixture looks thick enough.

Carry on boiling for few more minutes and then remove from the heat to cool down a little.

Add the fruit mixture to a food processor and puree it until smooth.

Add a tiny pinch of salt and cinnamon or mixed spices.

Check that the mixture is cold enough and add the egg yolks and butter and blend more until you achieve a thick mixture.

To make the short crust pastry

Crumble the butter into the flour first.

Prepare the saffron by gently crushing it with a spoon in about one tablespoon of cold water. This will make the saffron to release its colour and flavour.

Add the saffron water to the flour, together with the egg yolk and bring the pastry together by kneading it very quickly.

Leave to rest the pastry in the fridge for about 20 minutes, whilst you are preparing your plum filling.

Butter a 8-9 inch pastry tart baking dish and roll out the short-crust pastry between two sheets of non-stick baking paper (this will make your life a lot easier and make the rolling out quicker).

Layer the pastry dish and cut off any overhanging pastry. If you have a lot of leftovers, you can make a latice top (once you pour the filling in) although this wasn’t done at the time.

Prepare the plum tart for baking

Pour carefully into the prepared tart pie shell and bake for 30 minutes at 180C until the pastry is lightly brown and you can see that the plum filling has set.

As an optional extra (if you have any plums left) you can slice up the plums to a very thin layers and add them to the top of the tart before it goes into the oven.

How to keep Plum & Pear tart

The Plum & Pear tart will keep for 3-5 days (and even longer if needed). Keep the tart in a suitable container in the fridge or somewhere fairly cold in your kitchen.

The tart is not particularly suitable for freezing because the crust pastry gets soggy when you defrost it afterwards.