A Parisian Tart: Spilled Milk #333

You'll love this sweet and savory shallot tarte Tatin. I'm also getting into: how an accident turned into a revelation, the challenges of making tarte Tatin, what I'd eat with my version.

Let us begin, as all great French culinary accidents do, with two sisters, a misplaced apple and a frying pan full of hubris.

The tarte Tatin—that gloriously upturned, caramel-kissed, rustic seductress of the dessert world and my personal favorite dessert—was not so much invented as rescued from disaster with typical Gallic flair.

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Stéphanie and Caroline Tatin ran a modest hotel in the late 19th century, about 80 kilometers outside Paris, in Lamotte-Beuvron in the Sologne region. Their spot catered to hunters, travelers and the sort of rustic bourgeoisie who preferred ducks to duchesses. Legend has it that Stéphanie, either in a fog of fatigue or a fit of existential distraction, began making an apple tart and forgot to line the pan with pastry.

Realizing her mistake, perhaps by the smell of apples edging into the burnt end of the spectrum, she hastily slapped pastry on top, shoved it in the oven like a guilty secret and inverted the thing when it was done. The result? A revelation: glossy, golden, buttery fruit sitting smugly atop a flaky base, smugger still for having defied convention.