Butter tart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Butter tarts

A butter tart is a type of pastry best known as a Canadian treat. It should not be confused with butter pie (a savoury pie from the Preston area of Lancashire, England) or with bread and butter pudding.

Contents

[edit] Description

The English Canadian tart consists of butter, sugar, and eggs in a pastry shell, similar to the base of the U. S. pecan pie without the nut topping, and similar to the French-Canadian sugar pie. Additional ingredients can include currants, raisins, pecans, walnuts, coconut, dates, butterscotch, chocolate chips, or peanut butter.[citation needed]. Most purists, however, decry such adulterants as unacceptable deviations from the pure tart form.

[edit] History

Butter tarts were a staple of pioneer Canadian cooking, and they remain a characteristic pastry of Canada, considered one of only a few recipes of genuinely Canadian origin (for example, by the 6th edition of the Collins English Dictionary). One of the earliest known Canadian recipes is from northern Ontario and dates back to 1915.[citation needed]

Similar tarts are made in Scotland, where they are often referred to as Ecclefechan butter tarts from the town of Ecclefechan. In France, they are related to the much more common tarte à la frangipane, that differs from the basic Canadian recipe only by the addition of ground almonds. The origin thus appears to be unknown.[citation needed]


[edit] References


[edit] External links