Dessert Atlas · Dessert
Tarte Tatin
- Advanced
- 1 h 30 m
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a sweet edge rounding the corners.
Ingredients
- 8 firm apples (Braeburn, Cox, or Reine des Reinettes if France loves you): peeled, halved, cored
- 150g sugar; 100g butter
- 1 disc all-butter puff pastry or shortcrust, rolled slightly larger than your pan
- A 24cm ovenproof skillet: the tarte is built and born in one vessel
- Crème fraîche, cold, for the hot-cold collision
Equipment
Skillet
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Dry the apple halves uncovered in the fridge overnight if you can: drier apples, deeper caramel, no flood.
- Melt sugar in the skillet to deep amber; whisk in butter; off heat, pack the apples in TIGHT standing circles, rounded side down: they shrink; overcrowd them.
- Simmer 15 min on the stove so the apples drink caramel from below; drape the pastry over, tucking the edges down inside like a duvet. 15 min
- Bake 200°C, 25–30 min. Rest FIVE minutes only; place a plate over, breathe once, and flip with conviction. Rearrange any deserters. 30 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Tawny Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry or bourbon
- From the Taps
- Barleywine
- Zero-Proof
- Cold-brew coffee
Caramel echoing caramel: oxidative aging built the same flavors into the glass that the pan built into the plate.
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