... cooked up by Henry Vlll for the Touch Recipe Book

Maids of Honour

Maids of honour tart (also known as maids of honour cake is a traditional English baked tart consisting of a puff pastry shell filled with cheese curds. A variation is to add jam or almonds and nutmeg. Traditionally the tart was puff pasty filled with sweetened milk curds.

The tart is said to date back to Henry VIII when he witnesses some of the Queen's Maid of honours eating some cakes and demanded to taste one. He found them delicious and named them after the maids. There are ideas that go even further, citing that that the maid who made the tarts was imprisoned and had to produce them solely for the King. However, there is another theory that they were named after Anne Boleyn, a maid of honour at the time, who made the cakes for Henry VIII.

A tea room in Kew in Surrey, "The Original Maids of Honour", dates back to the 18th Century and was set up specifically to sell these tarts.

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