Charles de Gaulle’s menu
The family dessert (closing the bourgeois meal)

Tarte aux pommes du dimanche

FestiveReconstruction🍯 🍋moyen1 h 15

A shortcrust pastry filled with a fine apple compote and apple quarters arranged in a rosette, baked golden and glazed with apricot jam. The Sunday meal dessert, which perfumes the whole house.

Why this dish? The dessert of a family table without ostentation: an apple tart as made in all good French homes, and especially in the North where the General was born (Lille). A Sunday dessert, modest and comforting, in the image of the table at Colombey.
The dessert, at our home, had no need for show. An apple tart, that is a worthy end to a family meal. We made it on Sundays, with apples from the orchard, a hand-worked pastry and a hint of cinnamon. When the smell rose through the house at Colombey, it was already a celebration. Eat it warm, sir, that is when it is best.
Charles de Gaulle
Ingredients
  • Flourenough for the pastry (base of shortcrust)
  • Buttera good lump (body of the pastry)
  • Apples from the orchard (Reinettes)several (filling)
  • Sugarto taste (sweetness)
  • Apricot jama little (glaze)
How it was made : Apple tart was the Sunday dessert of French families in the first half of the 20th century: they used apples from the orchard, stored all winter in the cellar, and the pastry was hand-kneaded for lack of a mixer. The apricot jam glaze gave that shine admired in the pastry shop.