Type | Pastry |
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Course | Snack or Dessert |
Place of origin | Canada |
Main ingredients | Pastry shell, butter, sugar, syrup, eggs |
Variations | Addition of raisins, walnuts or pecans or other flavourings |
580 kcal (2428 kJ) | |
Part of a series on |
Canadian cuisine |
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Foodportal |
A butter tart (French : tarte au beurre) is a type of small pastry tart highly regarded in Canadian cuisine. The sweet tart consists of a filling of butter, sugar, syrup, and egg, baked in a pastry shell until the filling is semi-solid with a crunchy top. [1] The butter tart should not be confused with butter pie (a savoury pie from the Preston area of Lancashire, England) or with bread and butter pudding.
Recipes for the butter tart vary according to the families baking them. Because of this, the appearance and physical characteristics of the butter tart – the firmness of its pastry, or the consistency of its filling – also vary. [2] [3]
Traditionally, the English Canadian tart consists of butter, sugar, and eggs in a pastry shell, similar to the French-Canadian sugar pie, or the base of the U.S. pecan pie without the nut topping. The butter tart is different from the sugar pie given the lack of flour in the filling. [4] The butter tart is different from pecan pie in that it has a "runnier" filling due to the omission of corn starch. Often raisins, walnuts, or pecans are added to the traditional butter tart, although the acceptability of such additions is a matter of national debate. [5] [6] As an iconic Canadian food and one of the most popular desserts in the country, the raisin-or-no-raisin question can provoke polarizing debate. [7]
More exotic flavours are also produced by some bakers. Examples such as maple, bacon, pumpkin spice, chili, and salted caramel cardamom flavours have been made for competitions. [8]
Butter tarts became common in Canadian pioneer cooking, and they remain a characteristic pastry of Canada. It is primarily eaten in and associated with the English-speaking provinces of Canada.
The butter tart is a derivative of one or more of the following: [1]
The earliest published Canadian recipe is from Barrie, Ontario, dating back to 1900 and can be found in The Women's Auxiliary of the Royal Victoria Hospital Cookbook, [11] to which a chef by the name of Mrs. Mary Ethel MacLeod submitted the recipe for a butter tart filling. [12] The original cookbook and recipe is housed at the Simcoe County Archives. [13] Another early publication of a butter tart recipe was found in a 1915 pie cookbook. [1] The food was an integral part of early Canadian cuisine and often viewed as a source of pride. [11]
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.
Butter tarts are an integral part of Central Canadian cuisine and are objects of cultural pride of many communities across Ontario and other provinces in central Canada. [14] This cultural and community connection with the tart has spawned butter tart themed tourism such as the Butter Tart festival at Muskoka Lakes, Ontario, [15] the trademarked "Butter Tart Trail" at Wellington North, Ontario, and the "Butter Tart Tour" in Kawarthas Northumberland, Ontario. [16] The two competing associations have since resolved their dispute, called "The Butter Tart Wars" by Canadian Living , [17] through the mutual agreement to modify "The Butter Tart Tour" to "Kawarthas Northumberland Butter Tart Tour". [18] The first Kawarthas Northumberland Butter Tart Tour Taste-Off was launched at the Flavour Festival in Peterborough on Sunday, April 28, 2013, where four bakeries were crowned winners by a panel of celebrity judges.
Ontario's Best Butter Tart Festival and Contest is an annual event held in Midland, Ontario. [19] The contest portion of the festival attracts bakers from across Ontario, and is Canada's largest butter tart–themed celebration, with over 50,000 tarts sold in the festival market in 2014. [20]
National Geographic recognized the significance of the butter tart in an article on Georgian Bay, Ontario. In October 2013, referring to a stand in Wasaga Beach, they stated that "It's the homemade Canadian butter tarts – flaky crust with gooey pecan filling – that set this place apart from other lakeside ice cream stands." [21]
The production of butter tarts in Canada slowed after a flood in Quebec, in April 2019, striking a major production centre. Global News reported the Vachon bakery in Sainte-Marie-de-Beauce had to be evacuated after a long-term flood. In July, Global News reported the bakery was slowly getting back to speed. [22]
As part of the "Sweet Canada" series, a commemorative postage stamp was issued by Canada Post in April 2019 to celebrate the butter tart. [23]
The Canadian alternative rock band Len referenced butter tarts on their 1999 international hit "Steal My Sunshine", which confused some non Canadian listeners. [24]
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit, nuts, fruit preserves, brown sugar, sweetened vegetables, or with thicker fillings based on eggs and dairy. Savoury pies may be filled with meat, eggs and cheese or a mixture of meat and vegetables.
An apple pie is a pie in which the principal filling is apples. Apple pie is often served with whipped cream, ice cream, custard or cheddar cheese. It is generally double-crusted, with pastry both above and below the filling; the upper crust may be solid or latticed. The bottom crust may be baked separately ("blind") to prevent it from getting soggy. Tarte Tatin is baked with the crust on top, but served with it on the bottom.
Canadian cuisine consists of the cooking traditions and practices of Canada, with regional variances around the country. First Nations and Inuit have practiced their culinary traditions in what is now Canada for at least 15,000 years. The advent of European explorers and settlers, first on the east coast and then throughout the wider territories of New France, British North America and Canada, saw the melding of foreign recipes, cooking techniques, and ingredients with indigenous flora and fauna. Modern Canadian cuisine has maintained this dedication to local ingredients and terroir, as exemplified in the naming of specific ingredients based on their locale, such as Malpeque oysters or Alberta beef. Accordingly, Canadian cuisine privileges the quality of ingredients and regionality, and may be broadly defined as a national tradition of "creole" culinary practices, based on the complex multicultural and geographically diverse nature of both historical and contemporary Canadian society.
Apple struesel is a traditional Viennese streusel, a popular pastry in Austria, Bavaria, the Czech Republic, Northern Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and other countries in Europe that once belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867–1918).
Chess pie is a dessert with a filling composed mainly of flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and sometimes milk, characteristic of Southern United States cuisine.
The Nanaimo bar is a bar dessert that requires no baking and is named after the Canadian city of Nanaimo in British Columbia. It consists of three layers: a wafer, nut, and coconut crumb base; custard icing in the middle; and a layer of chocolate ganache on top. Many varieties exist, consisting of various types of crumb, various flavours of icing, and various types of chocolate.
Apple cakes are cakes in which apples feature as a main flavour and ingredient. Such cakes incorporate apples in a variety of forms, including diced, pureed, or stewed, and can include common additions like raisins, nuts, and 'sweet' spices such as cinnamon or nutmeg. They are a common and popular dessert worldwide, thanks to millennia of apple cultivation in Asia and Europe, and their widespread introduction and propagation throughout the Americas during the Columbian Exchange and colonisation. As a result, apple desserts, including cakes, have a huge number of variations.
Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine is the typical and traditional fare of the Pennsylvania Dutch.
Pecan pie is a pie of pecan nuts mixed with a filling of eggs, butter and sugar. Variations may include white or brown sugar, cane syrup, sugar syrup, molasses, maple syrup, or honey. It is commonly served at holiday meals in the United States and is considered a specialty of Southern U.S. origin. Most pecan pie recipes include salt and vanilla as flavorings. Pecan pie may be served with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or hard sauce.
Treacle tart is a traditional British dessert. The earliest known recipe for the dessert is from English author Mary Jewry in her cookbooks from the late 19th century.
Crostata is an Italian baked tart or pie. The earliest known use of crostata in its modern sense can be traced to the cookbooks Libro de Arte Coquinaria by Martino da Como, published c. 1465, and Cuoco napolitano, published in the late 15th century, containing a recipe titled Crostata de Caso, Pane, etc..
Sugar pie is a dessert in northern French and Belgian cuisine, where it is called tarte au sucre. It is also popular in Canada.
Pie in American cuisine has roots in English cuisine and has evolved over centuries to adapt to American cultural tastes and ingredients. The creation of flaky pie crust is credited to American innovation. Reflecting American preferences for simple and hearty meals, America's pies were generous and filling, although less "dainty" than European-style tarts made with other types of pastry doughs.
Green tomato pie is a pie in American cuisine that can be made like other fruit pies by sprinkling sugar, flour, cinnamon and other spices or raisins over sliced tomatoes and pieces of butter, or by simply cooking the ingredients on the stovetop before baking in a pastry-lined dish.
Ecclefechan tarts, also known as Ecclefechan butter tarts, are a traditional Scottish baked pastry consisting of an outer pastry crust filled with butter, muscovado sugar, dried fruit such as raisins and cherries, in addition to a small quantity of vinegar. The filling forms a treacle as it bakes. It can also contain chopped almonds and a mixture of spices.
Len, definitively, in the public eye, came from nowhere, to whence they returned, but not before offering history some butter tarts. (If you've been wondering for 20 years, the Canadian treat resembles mini pecan pies sans pecans. They're better than you think.)