Butter, sugar, flour, & apples.

That’s it.

Left in most people’s hands, those ingredients can be combined in all sorts of combinations, and the result would be something that tasted like, well...butter, sugar, flour & apples.

But, the french aren’t like most people. In a lot of ways, actually. But that’s a whole ‘nother blog entry.

This entry is all about how the french managed to take four simple ingredients and pull together something that tastes like something far greater than the sum of its parts.

There are varying stories about the creation of the first Tarte Tatin. A woman innkeeper burned some apples, or someone accidentally cooked an apple cake upside down. Whatever the truth is, Tarte Tatin is neither a simple dish, nor a particularly complicated one. It’s just one that requires a little bit of chemistry and patience.

One of the major differences between a Tarte Tatin and an apple pie, beyond the lack of spices in the former, is the type of apples used to make it. Apple pies are often best made with a variety of varieties of cooking apples. The different tastes and textures make a more complex pie.

In a Tarte Tatin, however, one wants a simple, clear taste and look in the finished product. Plus, one must use firmer, eating apples rather than cooking ones, since softer flesh apples simply won’t hold up to the intense cooking.

The magic of a Tarte Tatin is in the caramelization of the butter, sugar, and apples. That’s what gives it its unique and famous flavor. That’s also the tricky bit when it comes to its creation. Cook it a second too long, and you have burnt sugar apple hard candy. Too short and you have a leaky, upside-down butter apple pie.

Tarte Tatin

(There are as many Tarte Tatin recipes as there are french chefs, but they only vary in terms of amounts and technique. A traditional Tarte Tatin will always only have four ingredients)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

For filling:

5 T butter

1 C sugar

6 large Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored, and cut into eight wedges

For pastry:

1 C flour

1 stick butter

approx 5 T ice water

Let’s get the crust out of the way first. Check out our Sour Cherry Pie recipe for detailed instructions. The only difference for this recipe is that we can halve the amounts. We only need one crust for Tarte Tatin. Go ahead and make the crust first, and place it in the refrigerator until the filling is ready.

Next, let’s pick our apples. The traditional Tarte Tatin apple is the Calville Blanc apple, which dates back to 1598. There aren’t many sources for that, unless you wish to grow your own, in which case you can find trees at Trees of Antiquity. (A great site for heirloom and historic trees.)

In America, we mostly use Golden Delicious apples. That might be what we used at The Beekman as well. We’re not sure. All of the apple trees were planted long before we arrived. But one of the trees provides a firm yellow apple, with a beautiful blush of red:

They’re not the most beautiful things to look at - as most organic apples aren’t. But they’re beautiful to us. And that’s all that matters. That, and the fact that they taste heavenly.

We peel our apples with this device. It’s an old invention, but I don’t think they’ve ever improved upon it. Plus it’s sturdy and cheap, unlike most kitchen appliances. We highly recommend it, especially if you find the need to pare bushels of apples for sauce or freezing.

The chickens love the apple peel “worms” it produces.

Next, core and wedge the apples. Again, we like this device:

We usually put the wedges in a bowl of ice water with a little lemon juice to wait for when we’re ready for them. We know, we know - Tarte Tatin shouldn’t use a fifth ingredient. But the lemon juice is just to keep the apples from browning. Not that that matters either, since they’ll be browned by the end of cooking...but just humor us.

Now it’s time for the tricky part. Making the caramel.

First, choose a 10-12 inch deep skillet with a heavy bottom and sides.

Next, fill your sink with just enough cold walter and ice so that the skillet can sit in it without water overflowing the sides and flooding it. This is so that when your caramel reaches the precise temperature, you can place the entire pan into the ice bath to keep it from burning.

We don’t know that you particularly need a picture of a sink filled with ice, but we took one. So here you go:

Now to start the caramel. Gently heat the skillet over medium heat, and place the butter and sugar in at the same time.

Stir as it melts together. First, they will appear to foam together in clumps:

Then it begins to spread out as it begins to slowly brown:

It’s important to remember to STIR FREQUENTLY. You don’t want any sections of it to burn.

When it reaches the next temperature stage (after about 8 - 12 minutes) the butter will miraculously begin to separate out again. This is when you need to begin stirring constantly. There’s only a few minutes left before it turns medium brown - which indicates that it’s ready for the ice bath:

The caramel will quickly cool. It will even become quite stiff. That’s all okay.  After all cooking has stopped in the ice bath, it’s time to layer the apples directly onto the caramel’s surface:

Place the first layers of apples on top of the caramel in concentric circles, with the rounded sides down.

Arrange any remaining apples on top of the first layer with rounded sides up.

Once apples are in place, cover with the pastry dough, tucking any edges down into the pan. Place pan in preheated oven.

Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, or until the pastry is medium/dark brown and juices are bubbling briskly at the edges. Remove from oven, and let stand on cooling rack for five minutes.

After five minutes of cooling, place platter (larger than skillet circumference) on top of pan. With one motion, flip upside down and release tarte onto platter.

Okay, be mentally prepared for some of the apples and caramel to remain stuck to the pan. That’s okay. Good, even. Those are the most flavorful bits, and every Tarte Tatin should have some crusty dark spots. Just scrape them off and artfully arrange them back onto the tarte as best you can.

Also, some extra juice is going to run off the sides onto the platter. We find the best way to remedy this is by scooping it up with a finger and licking it.

Here’s our finished product. We’ve had them come out darker. And we’ve had them come out lighter. Either way, they’re pretty darn good.

The chewy caramel at the edges is by far the best part of all. Be sure to serve with creme friache, or even sour cream, since whipped cream or ice cream would be too sweet and compete.

Viva la France!

In loving memory of Uncle Bob.