This delicate cheese pie was served at our Candlemas Luncheon in 2010. It also appears in our Small Selection of Cheese Recipes Booklet along with 12 other recipes.

White Torte

For 24 mini tarts

• 1/2 pound whole milk ricotta

• 4 egg whites (beaten stiff)*

• 1/3 cup sugar

• 3 tbsp butter, softened

• 2 tbsp milk

• 1 1/2 tsp ground ginger

• Pastry dough ( enough for about a single  9 inch pie crust - half a package of commercial dough can be used if rolled out a bit thinner. orSee Pastry Dough for other options)

 Roll out pastry dough and press into greased mini-muffin tin.

Cream together cheese and butter and sugar. Add ginger and milk.  Fold in beaten egg whites.  Spoon filling into  uncooked pastry shells. (About a tablespoon each)

Bake at 325 for 25-30 minutes (28 minutes) or until pastry is just done.  The goal here is a very pale tart. Excess filling batter can be baked in custard cups.

Serve warm or chilled. Can be made a day ahead but better if fresh.

Variation: substitute finely grated orange or lemon peel for ginger. Milk may be omitted.

The original recipe gives no indication that the egg white are beaten first and a perfectly good tart can be made without beating the egg whites, but I prefer the texture that beating the whites gives to the finished tarts. This also increases the amount of filling you will get from the recipe.

White Torte

 Take a libra and a half of good fresh cheese, finely chop, and crush well; and take twelve or fifteen albumena, or egg whites, and mix well with the cheese, adding half a libra of sugar and half an ounce of the whitest ginger you can get; similarly add a half pound of rendered lard from good, lean pork or, in stead of lard, the same amount of good fresh butter; and likewise add the necessary amount of milk, probably a third of a jug, Then make the dough or rather the crust in a pan, suitably thin, and cook very slowly, applying heat from below and above: and be sure that it I browned on top by the heat; and when if seem to be done, remove from the pan and top with some fine sugar and some good rose water.

 The Art of Cooking, by Maestro Martino of Como, as Trans. by Jeremy Parzen

Notes; I do not use the rose water because I seem to be allergic.

Candlemas Luncheon Menu

Other recipes from this manuscript

Ofella

Other recipe for sweet dishes

• Apple Fritters
• Apple Puffs
• Apple Pillows
• Bryndons
• Cherry Puffs
• Dulcamine
• Dutch Oven Custard
• German French Toast
• Wardyns in Syrup

Other Italian Recipes

• Armored Turnips 
• Imperial Fritters 
• Onions in Sauce
• Ravioli 
• Sweet and Sour Sauce for Pork
• White Fritters  

  This recipe was published in the Dragons Laire Culinary Guild Booklet; "A Small Selection of Cheese Recipes from Medieval and Renaissance Sources"

Other recipes featured in this booklet on this site include

• Frytours of Mylke
• Genovese Tart
• Imperial Fritters
• Ofella
• Ravioli
• White Fritters