How To Make A Cartouche

A cartouche is a piece of baking paper cut into a circle to act as a lid; it’s sometimes called a ‘false lid’.

Covering the surface of a sauce, soup or other liquid with a cartouche while it’s cooking keeps the ingredients submerged in the liquid and reduces evaporation.

Pickles are often covered with a cartouche to keep the vegetables submerged in the pickling liquid, while sauces and custards are covered once they’re cooked to prevent a skin forming on the surface.

You’ll need:

baking paper (parchment paper)
scissors

Here’s how to make a cartouche (scroll down for a step-by-step video):

Cut a large square of baking paper.
Fold it in half to form a rectangle, in half again to form a square, then in half again to form a triangle.
From the folded corner, keep folding the triangle in half to create increasingly thinner triangles until you reach a thickness that can just still be cut with scissors.
Hold the triangle over the container to be covered so that the tip is in the centre (to estimate the radius).
Cut off the excess paper so that the triangle is just slightly longer than the radius of the container.
Unfold the triangle and you’ll have a near perfect circle ready to cover your container.
Sometimes the very tip of the triangle is snipped off before unfolding to create a small hole to allow excess steam to escape (I rarely find this necessary).

Now you know how to make a cartouche, you’ll use it in all sorts of recipes including ice creams and sorbets; poached quinces and saffron poached pears; and pickles like Vietnamese pickled vegetables, Indonesian acar, Lebanese pink pickled turnips and Korean kimchi.