Although John Murrell, in his early seventeenth century tome A Newe Booke of Cookerie, gives a recipe ‘To make a Pudding in a Frying-panne’, and mentions that his ‘A Fierced Pudding’ can either be boiled or baked, it would take a while before people would actually start baking proper puddings in the oven. Pastry ovens were constructed in a few important kitchens in the early sixteenth century but they would be used solely for more delicate pastry. Florentines and other tarts were often made into elaborate shapes, resembling a stained-glass window, and beautifully decorated with elaborately cut pastry covers, an ancestor of the lattice tart top. They could be made as part of the tart, but often were made separately to act as a beautifully crafted lid that could be taken off before serving, and sometimes reused for another tart.
