Tourte Meringuée, or Tart with Royal Icing

Instructions

1. Lay a band of fine paste round the rim of a tart-dish, fill it with any kind of fruit mixed with a moderate proportion of sugar.
2. Roll out the cover very evenly, moisten the edges of the paste, press them together carefully, and trim them off close to the dish.
3. Spread equally over the top, to within rather more than an inch of the edge all round, the whites of three fresh eggs beaten to a quite solid froth and mixed quickly at the moment of using them with three tablespoonsful of dry sifted sugar.
4. Put the tart into a moderately brisk oven, and when the crust has risen well and the icing is set, either lay a sheet of writing-paper lightly over it, or draw it to a part of the oven where it will not take too much colour.
5. Time: Bake half an hour.
6. Note: this is now a fashionable mode of icing tarts, and greatly improves their appearance.
7. Note: Acton explains in a footnote that the limits of the volume compelled her to omit receipts found in almost every English cookery book in favour of less familiar ones, which accounts for the small number of receipts for pies and fruit tarts in this chapter.