MEDIEVAL PASTRIES: Darioles

The dariole is one of several medieval pastries which have survived remarkably well. Some sources describe it as a cream tart and some versions do seem close to flan. This was clearly popular from the start - it appears on a number of menus. But early recipes are rare.

The first published (and very corrupt) edition of the Viandier gives a recipe for "cream darioles" which is frustratingly incomplete: "Crush up almonds, but do not strain them. Fry the cream well in butter. Sweeten well."

The Forme of Cury is more helpful, and also suggests a slightly more flavorful version: "Take cream of cow's milk or almond. Add eggs with sugar, saffron and salt. Mix it well. Put in a coffin [pastry box, basically] II inches deep. Bake it well and serve it forth."

Note that the Viandier's version seems to treat almonds as inherent to the pastry, while the Forme of Cury clearly is offering meat and fast day variants.

La Varenne's 1680 recipe is FAR more complete and basically describes a kind of pie (or almost a giant flan):

Put in a basin or a pan for example the fourth of a litron [1 litron=1.7608 British pint] of fine flour, and the white and yolk of 2 eggs: knead these things together well with a spatula or a spoon, adding a bit of milk little by little, and salt as desired; because not much is needed; soak this flour or mixture well as if it was to make gruel; and when the mixture is well kneaded, add a pint of milk which must be well mixed with the above... and if you do not have cow's milk or that of any other animal, one can use almond milk in which case one must add a bit more flour.
The mixture being ready put a crust in a pie pan and the pie pan being in the oven, fill it sufficiently, with the said mixture; cook this in the oven, and when it is cooked and removed from the oven, slit a cross in it, without touching the crust, then put in the slit in the dariole a piece of good unsalted butter about the size of a walnut; a good eighth of a pint of powdered sugar with a little rose water then put your dariole back in the oven, so that the butter and the sugar melt, and flavor this pastry, which happens quickly, then take it out of the oven; ...

It takes about half an hour to cook a dariole or pie of a pint of milk.

When this dariole is done, you can add butter, sugar and rose water, as said above, otherwise you can simply sprinkle it with sugar and a little rose water.

The almond milk here is again optional. Funny to see rosewater, which you would actually more expect to see in earlier versions.

By 1814, however, Beauvilliers clearly is describing individual portions in what seems to be a standard mold (something like a muffin pan or individual cups?):

Make a crust of pie pastry the thickness of a line [1 line=a twelfth of an inch] and a half; cut it with a dough-cutter big enough that your little crusts spill over the molds of your darioles: give them the proper shapes on the point of your knife, and put them like that in these forms, which you will have buttered; finish giving them their shape by introducing a bit of dough trim the dough spilling over the forms; for twelve darioles, put a tablespoonful of flour, six or eight macarons or bitter marzipain, well crushed, a little salt, some orange blossom, and six raw egg yolks; knead all this with three "fish" [1 fish=1189 decimeters, or a quarter of a pint] of good milk: three quarters of an hour before serving fill your forms, being careful to stir the mixture; put good butter on it, the size of half a hazelnut, then bake them in the oven; once they are baked, take them out of the forms, lay them out on the plate, sprinkle them with fine sugar, and serve them as hot as possible.

NOTE: French macarons are made with almond powder, not coconuts.

An 1860 recipe (from Leblanc's Nouveau Manuel Complet du Patissier) is similar but offers various flavors:

Using fine dough fill 18 small metal cups as for patés in gravy, and put in each a little lump of butter the size of a hazelnut, then pour over it the following garnishing:

Put in a small casserole 30 grams of sifted flour with an egg; stir to make a sort of dough, then add six egg yolks, the same quantity of crushed macarons, another egg, a grain of salt and 125 grams of powdered sugar. Shake the mix well and add a quantity of cream equal to ten full dariole molds, then add the desired flavoring, such as lemon, orange blossom , etc. To make darioles with coffee or chocolate, prepare the cream with the one or the other.

When these darioles are full, put them in a brisk oven; they must only bake enough to rise 7 millimeters above the mold; take them out then glaze them and serve them nice and hot.

(Today, a specialized form - a truncated cone, basically - is actually called a "dariole", but so is the pastry made in it.)

By the twentieth century, one already starts to see "darioles" incorporating meat; this is one of several such recipes in the 1909 Cassell's Household Cookery:

Lamb Darioles with Peas
Required: a pound of lamb, any lean part, four eggs, some peas, sauce, &c., as below. Cost, about 2s. to 2s. 6d.

Lay the raw meat on a board, and scrape it; put the pulp thus obtained in a basin, season to taste, add the eggs, beaten and strained, and a gill of BROWN SAUCE. Fill some moulds, as illustrated, garnish the tops first with some cooked carrot and tongue in thin strips, and cook them in a potato steamer for about half an hour. Prepare the peas by boiling nicely, put them in the middle of the dish, with the darioles round, and pour a little SAUCE DE MENTHE round the base. These little moulds require very thorough buttering to ensure the contents turning out well. The copper ones, tin-lined, are the best, as the cooking is more even, besides lasting much longer.

The treat has endured then in differing forms, with almonds being added either directly or as macarons in a number of versions, and with a variety of additional flavorings, and in more recent centuries even meat.