Sharp or pungent taste.
Imagine three families with the surnames Saunders, Sanders, and Sander all washing ashore on a desert island, and then trying—five centuries later—to sort out their family trees. That genealogical confusion would pale in comparison to the twisted etymological histories of the words tart, tartine, torte, tourte, torteau, tourtiere, tortilla, tortellini, and tortoni. Each of these nine food words belongs to one of three distinct word families: the tart family, the torte family, and the tortoni family. Belonging to the first family is the word tart, meaning small pastry, which derives from the French name for the same dessert item, tarte (the adjective tart, meaning sharp-tasting, derives from an entirely different source). The earlier history of the French tarte is unknown: it was once thought to have derived from the Late Latin torta panis, a kind of bread, but linguists now say it is unlikely that the or sound in forte could have shifted to the ar sound in tarte. From tarte, the French later derived tartine, the name of a slice of bread spread with butter or preserves, which English borrowed in the early nineteenth century. The second word family—the torte family—developed from the Late Latin torta panis, mentioned earlier as the name of a Roman bread. In French, torta panis—or rather its abbreviated form, torta—gave rise to tourteau, which English borrowed in the fifteenth century as the name for a large, round loaf; torta also evolved into the French tourte, which English borrowed in sixteenth century, spelling it torte and using it as a name for a breadcake. Later on, in the early eighteenth century, English again borrowed the French tourte, this time retaining the French spelling, and using it to denote a pastry containing meat or fish. Still later, tourte inspired another word, tourtiere, which means meat pie in French Canada but which English adopted in the 1950s as a fancy synonym for pie-plate. The Late Latin torta also evolved in languages other than French. In Spanish, it gave rise to tortilla, meaning little cake, which English adopted at the end of the seventeenth century; similarly, in Italian, torta gave rise to tortellini, also meaning little cake, which English adopted in 1937. The third word family contains only one member, tortoni, an icecream dessert named after the Italian cafe-owner who invented it in Paris during the 1890s.
The tart that means sharp to the taste neither derived from, nor gave rise to, the tart that means filled pastry; after all, tarts are not tart but savoury or sweet. In fact, the adjective form of this word—that is, the tart that means sharp-tasting—is first recorded in Old English about a thousand years ago, more than four centuries before the unrelated pastry tart appeared. Originally, however, the adjective tart did not mean sharp in the gustatory sense, but instead sharp in the punitive sense: a tart punishment was a severe one. This original meaning suggests that the adjective tart developed from the Old English word teran, meaning to tear, a word associated with pain and punishment. By the end of the fourteenth century, however, tart had widened to include its current meaning of sharp to the taste.
A diminutive and solitary pastry enwrapping within its delicate crust, an assortment of delectable fillings, such as succulent fruits or savory meats, is what is commonly known as a tart or a turnover. Alternatively, a baked delicacy coated in sweet, viscous preserves is also referred to as a pastry with jam.