Egg tart
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| Type | Pastry |
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| Course | Dessert, snack |
| Serving temperature | Fresh from oven |
| Main ingredients | Flour, butter, sugar, egg, milk |
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| Egg tart | |||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 蛋撻 | ||||||||||||||
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| Simplified Chinese | 蛋挞 | ||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | egg tart | ||||||||||||||
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| Transcriptions | |
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| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | dàntǎ |
| Yue: Cantonese | |
| Yale Romanization | daahn tāat |
| IPA | [tàːntʰáːt] |
| Jyutping | daan6 taat1 |
The egg tart (commonly romanized as daahn tāat (Cantonese Yale: daan6 taat1), dàn tǎ (Mandarin), or dan tat) is a kind of custard tart found in Hong Kong, Portugal, Brazil, Britain, and various Asian countries, which consists of an outer pastry crust and is filled with egg custard and baked.
Before egg tart was introduced to Hong Kong, it is reported that it was first found in 1920s Guangzhou. Taking reference from the recipes of fruit tarts, the chefs in Guangzhou turned it into egg tarts by filling egg custards in the middle instead, a similar way to making simmered eggs with milk (燉蛋). However, as butter was very costly at that time, it was difficult for the chefs to make puff pastry for the tarts. Therefore, they have used lard instead.
During the 1920s, as there were tough competitions between department stores in attracting more customers, the chef of each department store would invent a new dim sum or dessert weekly (每週美點) as an attraction, and that was when egg tarts first appeared in Guangzhou. Later in the 1940s and 1950s, lots of the chefs have migrated to Hong Kong and thus brought the recipes with them. Hence, a Hong Kong style of egg tarts had emerged.
Custard tarts were first introduced in Hong Kong in the 1940s through cha chaan tengs. Hong Kong egg tarts are the adaptations of pastel de nata, popular in Macau. Canton (modern Guangdong) had more frequent contact with the West, particularly with Britain and Portugal, than the rest of China. Also, being a neighbour of Macau, Hong Kong has adopted some of the Macanese cuisine.
Other than egg tart, there is also the coconut tart.
Today, egg tarts are one of the more recognizable dim sum dishes offered in a dim sum house. In Guangzhou, there are 3 basic types of egg tarts: dan tat (egg tart), pastel de nata (Portuguese tart), coconut tart.
Egg tarts play a leading role in Guangzhou's dim sum scene, more so than shrimp dumplings according to public opinion. In contrast to other dim sum dishes, egg tarts have undergone very little reinvention and hence, some scholars believe it is a quintessential symbol of the fusion between Cantonese and Western cultures.
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Wikipedia