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Egg tart is a pastry found in Chinese cuisine. It consists of a flaky outer crust, with a middle filled with egg custard, which is then baked. It is related to the English-style custard tart, a pastry commonly enjoyed in the British Isles, Australia, and New Zealand. Egg tarts are typically marketed at Chinese bakeries, cha chaan tengs (tea restaurants), and some dim sum restaurants. The second character in the Chinese name (tat) is a character that closely resembles 'tart' in pronunciation (used only for its sound), while the first (dan) is Chinese for 'egg'.

Today's egg tarts come in many variations due to Hongkongers' eagerness to try almost anything. These include egg white tarts, milk tarts, honey-egg tarts, ginger juice-flavored egg tarts (the two aforementioned variation was a take upon traditional milk custard and egg custard, which was usually served in cha chaan teng), chocolate tarts and even "birds' nest" tarts.

History

Egg tart is one of the most popular Cantonese pastries but its history is short. Hong Kong Amateur Historian Ng Ho, associate professor in Hong Kong Baptist University, suggests a theory that an egg tart, inspired by English fruit tart, was a promotional pastry introduced in Guangzhou (alternative name Canton) in 1920s. Thanks to the competition among modern shopping malls or restaurants, chefs had to prepare a new pastry every week, named as 'Weekly Pastry' to attract customers. One of these weekly pastry is an egg tart which has swiftly gained its popularity throughout southern China. The original tart was elliptical in shape, in contrast with the round shape commonly found today.

Another theory suggests egg tarts are Chinese adoptions of making English custard tarts. Guangdong had long been the region in China that had had the most frequent contact with the West, in particular Britain, and Hong Kong was a former British colony. Custard tart made of shortcrust pastry, eggs, sugar, milk or cream, vanilla, and nutmeg has long been a favourite pastry in the British Isles, Australia, and New Zealand. According to Laura Mason and Catherine Bell's Traditional Foods of Britain: An Inventory (Prospect Books, London, 2004) a version of custard tart has been made in England since the Middle Ages. The medieval recipe was a shortcrust pastry case filled with a mixture of milk or cream, eggs, sweetening agents, and other spices. Gary Rhodes's New British Classics (BBC Worldwide, London, 1999) states the recipe of making the modern version of English custard tart has been more or less set since the Tudor times. According to * custard tarts were introduced in Hong Kong in the 1940's by western cafes/bakeries to compete with dim sum restaurants, which evolved to become egg tarts today.

Hong Kong-style

Hong Kong-style egg tarts have two main varieties, divided according to the type of the outermost layer or crust:
  • Butter-flavoured shortcrust pastry (牛油皮, pinyin: Niuyoupi, literally, "Cow oil (butter) skin"): made with shortcrust pastry. It is named "butter skin" in Chinese since it possesses a cookie-like flavour with a rich butter aroma.
  • Puff pastry (酥皮, pinyin: Supi, literally "Crispy skin"): made with puff pastry and with an extremely crisp texture. Lard is typically used in making the base rather than butter or shortening.

Another variety becoming more popular in the ever increasing focus on health are

  • Milk-centered egg tarts. It is composed of a smooth milky egg-white center and is somewhat healthier than traditional egg tarts.

Portuguese-style

Portuguese-style egg tarts were evolved from pastel de nata, a traditional Portuguese custard pastry that consists of custard in a crème brûlée-like consistency caramelized fashion in a puff pastry case. It was created more than 200 years ago by Catholic Sisters at Jerónimos Monastery (Portuguese Mosteiro dos Jerónimos) at Belém in Lisbon *. Casa Pastéis de Belém was the first pastry shop outside of the convent to sell this pastry in 1837, and it is now a popular pastry on every pastry shops around the world owned by Portuguese descents.

The Portuguese-style egg tarts known in Macao originated from Lord Stow's Café in Coloane, owned by a Briton named Andrew Stow. Stow modified the recipe of pastel de nata using techniques of making English custard tarts *. It has since become available at numerous bakeries, as well as Macau-style restaurants and Hong Kong branches of the KFC restaurant chain. There was a craze in Singapore and the Republic of China in the late 1990s.

In essence, the Portuguese-style egg tart commonly sold in Asia resembles the Hong Kong-style egg tart, except it requires a finishing touch of topping with a layer of syrup or granulated sugar, then baking in the oven to caramelize the sugar.

Trivia

Chris Patten, the last British Governor of Hong Kong before the transition to China in 1997, was known in Hong Kong popular culture to be fond of this pastry. He particularly enjoyed the egg tarts sold at Tai Cheong Bakery (TC:泰昌餅家; see external links below), and thus the eggs tarts sold at the bakery became known as "Fei-Paang egg tarts" (肥彭蛋撻; lit. Fat Patten's Egg Tart, "Fat Patten" being the governor's nickname in Cantonese). The story still remains popular among Hongkongers. In subsequent visits he makes a routine stop to help himself to his favourite Hong Kong specialty.

See also

External links

Chinese cuisine | Dim sum Hong Kong cuisine | Macanese cuisine | Pastry | Egg | 蛋撻

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Egg tart".

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