The Cookbook of Sabina Welserin has a great many pie and tart recipes. It has fruit pies and custard tarts, plus meat and fish pies. Most of the recipes only give instructions for the filling and this one is no exception.  Your favorite pie dough or pastry recipe will do just fine.

• 8 oz black raisins

• 4 oz golden (sultanas) raisins*

• 1/4 cup sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Combine raisons in bowl and cover with water and leave to soak overnight.  Drain well, combine in saucepan with sugar and cinnamon.  Heat over medium until sugar dissolves. 

I like to use this in small hand pies made with a folded over circle of pie dough.  The filling also works up nicely in a small open tart or as above in a small free-standing pie we baked under the cloche at Junefaire. I have not tried to make a large pie with it. (See Pastry Dough )

Original from the cookbook of Sabina Welserin, English Translation by Valoise Armstrong.

To make a raisin tart

Take raisins, wash them in water and rub them between the hands as one does to rub off the grape stems. Drain off the water, so that they become dry again. Rub them until the black skins become dry, then pick them over and clean them well and put sugar and cinnamon on them.

*The original obviously does not call for golden raisins but I have added my favorite here to give the filling a bit more depth.  The extensive instructions to prep the raisons make sense when you remember that seedless or seeded raisins are a very modern commodity.  Even recipes from the early part of the 20th century will include a note to seed the raisins and it never hurts to double check for stems and other undesirable items.  Below- Raisin pie filling

Above a single raisin mini-tart

Other recipes from this manuscript.

• Almond Tarts
• Apple Puffs
• Apple Pillows
• Chard Pie
• Cherry Puffs
• Dutch Oven Custard
• Genovese Tart
• Puffed Apples
• Rice Buns

hand pies above and below tiny tarts