Jam tart

The term "jam tart" came into common use around the 1840s, but the dish itself predates the term. They comprise small shortcrust pastry bases, filled with a fruit jam, such as strawberry, raspberry, apricot or lemon curd which are then baked. The earliest recorded use of the phrase "jam tart" is from 1840.

Jam tarts are considered a "quintessential" British food, They were unknown to most people in Medieval Europe, however, until the Atlantic sugar trade of the century. This was because until sugar became widely available for common use, the usual medieval sweetener was honey, but, unlike sugar, honey was a limited preservative. The ruling classes could afford sugar imported form the Middle East, and it was used to make what were known as "tartstuff", a rich butter paste patty filled with a fruit filling such as strawberry, mixed with were stewed with sugar, red wine, cinnamon, ginger or rose-water.

Jam tarts have entered British culture. In an episode of the television series Midsomer Murders, 'Secrets and Spies', one of the characters refers to Mr Kipling as being not "just a jam tart"; this was an allusion to both the confectionary company who produced the cakes and Rudyard Kipling, who wrote spy novels. In the sitcom Please Sir! (1968–1972) episode, Peter Cleall's character Eric Duffy defended a subnormal fellow pupil played by Peter Denyer—Dennis Dunstable—fellow actor David Barry wrote, Cleall was in possession of a jam tart. According to Barry, Cleall "carried the jam tart over to Richard Everett's character, and said threateningly, 'Did you say something, you pasty-faced pillock?'" before smashing the tart into Everett's face; "Jam trickled all over the shocked actor's face, down his neck and over his school uniform."