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.

Sometimes sauces are covered with a cartouche once they’re cooked to prevent a skin forming on the surface.

Here’s how to make a cartouche:

1. Cut a large square of baking paper (also called parchment paper).
2. Fold it in half, then in half again to form a triangle.
3. 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.
4. Hold the triangle over the pot to be covered so that the tip is in the centre (to estimate the radius).
5. Cut off the excess paper so that the triangle is just slightly longer than the radius of the pot.
6. Unfold the triangle and you’ll have a near perfect circle ready to cover your pot.
7. 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).