Cheese Tarts

By corlear

Gougères Bourguignonnes
In our wineries, when cheese crackers are served as an accompaniment to wine tasting; at very British dining tables, after the ladies have departed, when the men begin their cigars and start to pass around a port whose reflections, in the refracting facets of its decanter, are mingled purple and old gold, and the cheese biscuits in silver bowls are served to accompany that wine traditionally picked up as a ballast back across the Bay of Biscay; when we less formal folk entertain our friends and offer them an aperitif and accompany it with a cheese cracker—do any of us realize that we are in fact keeping up a tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages?
For the Burgundian gougère and the Flemish goyère are both sisters of that medieval cheese tart the flammiche, from Dinant, the favorite dessert of the canons of Liège who prized it because the cheese in it sharpened their palates so delightfully for the enjoyment of the great Burgundies in their cellars.
Cheese is, in fact, the drinker’s spur. Perhaps excessively so. By which I mean that its taste sometimes can be too strong to permit us to judge a wine properly, and at other times can improve its taste excessively. How many times, in the cellars of some wine-making château near Bordeaux, nibbling at a slice of étuvé—that Dutch cheese so dry that it almost crumbles in the hand—I have waxed enthusiastic over a wine that next day, drunk with some meat or other, has seemed to me far less good? But the gougère is cheese that has been tamed a little, and hence the wine-taster’s ideal.
Its patent of nobility dates back to Jehan Froissart, who used to enjoy it with the passing minstrels he entertained when vicar of Les Estinnes. And to François Villon, who included goyères, along with pheasants, tarts, and flans, as suitable fare for midnight celebrations. And, indeed, the word goyère is supposed to come from goguer: to make good cheer.
So three cheers still for the cheer of goyères and gougères both. Not forgetting—though I almost did—the talmouse, which is a first cousin of those not forgotten medieval beauties. The word comes from the Old French talemose (talemelier, “baker”), and it is simply a little puff pastry case with a cheese filling made with cream and eggs. Those made in Saint-Denis were once famed far and wide. Villon bequeathed one in his testament to his friend Jehan Régnier, and Balzac, in Un Debut dans la vie, has Pierrotin’s stagecoach stop outside the door of the innkeeper in Saint-Denis “who sells the famous talmouses for which all the travelers stop,” so that Georges Marest can buy talmouses and Alicante wine for all his traveling companions.
The Flemish goyère is made of brisé pastry, cream cheese, eggs, milk, and Maroillers, the cheese with the high yet delicate taste that was a favorite of Charles V.
As for the gougère, there are a number of recipes for it of varying richness. Here is a version for the true epicure that I extracted one day from a winegrower’s wife in Mercurey, after having tasted the wines in that Burgundian village’s cellars.

Ingredients

• 2 cups milk
• salt
• pepper
• 8 tbs butter
• 1/2 lb flour
• 8 eggs
• 6 oz. Gruyère
• 2 tbs cream

Preparation

Step 1

Pour the milk into a saucepan. Add salt, pepper and the butter; then bring to a boil.

Remove from heat and stir in the flour with a spatula. Replace on heat for one minute, stirring all the time.

Remove from heat again, add 7 of the eggs, one by one, and 4 ounces of the Gruyère, finely diced, stirring all the time. Lastly fold in the cream.

Place this mixture in small muffin tins, half-filling each one. Beat the remaining egg and brush it over the tops. Then push the pieces of cheese into them and bake in medium oven. Serve hot.

All wines—white, red, or rosé—are suitable to drink with these spurs to enjoyment. If you really want to enjoy yourselves, have several ready to taste—and to argue about!