Forms: 5 tartlote, tartlett, tartelat, 8– tartlet. [a. F. tartelette (14th c. in Littré), dim. of tarte, TART sb.; in 18th c. perh. formed anew on TART sb.] A small tart.
c. 1420. Liber Cocorum (1862), 41. Tartlotes. Take porke sothun, and grynde hit wele…. Kover hit with lyddes, and pynche hit fayre,… And bake hit forthe.
c. 1460. J. Russell, Bk. Nurture, 521. Iusselle, tartlett, cabages, & nombles of vennure.
c. 1475. Pict. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 789/6. Hec artocria, a tartelat.
1777. Charlotte Mason, Lady’s Assistant (ed. 3), 368. Tartlets. Have very small and shallow tin pans; butter them, and lay in a bit of puff-paste, marking it neatly round the edges, and leaving a hole in the middle, bake them; when they are cool, fill them with custard, or put into each half an apricot, rasberry-jam, or any preserved fruit, a little preserved apple, or marmalade; pour over it custard, with very little sugar in it.
1788. V. Knox, Winter Even. (1790), II. xxix. 194. The puffs and tartlets of the pastry-cook.
1826. Miss Mitford, Our Village, II. (1853) 89. Every shilling of her pocket-money she expended upon her poor cousins; worked for them, begged for them, and transferred to them every present that was made to herself, from a silk frock to a penny tartlet.
1832. Lytton, Eugene A., II. vii. Six pancakes and a tartlet, having severally disappeared down the jaws of the invalid.
1836–9. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Mistaken Milliner. Plum-pudding and apple-pie and tartlets without number.
1837. T. Hook, Jack Brag, xiv. Three raspberry tartlets.
1890. Amelia E. Barr, She Loved a Sailor, ix. 153. Produced a tray holding a plate of cold prairie hen, a raspberry jam tartlet, and a pitcher of milk.
