Rich Paste
1 1/2 cups flour. 1/3 cup Cottolene. 3/4 teaspoon salt. 1/2 teaspoon baking powder.
Ice water.
PROCESS: Mix salt with flour, cut in Cottolene (except one tablespoon) with a knife, moisten with cold water. Turn on a floured board, pat and roll out, spread with tablespoon of Cottolene and dredge lightly with flour, then roll sheet like a jelly roll; divide in two equal parts. Roll out a trifle larger than pie tin. 艺
This is a two-crust pie pastry, laminated by rolling the dough around a smear of fat like a jelly roll. The excerpt as printed begins mid-ingredient-list, so the flour and water quantities are missing.
- The missing flourThe salt, baking powder and fat proportions point to roughly 2 cups of flour for a two-crust 9-inch pie, with about 2/3 cup fat and 5 to 7 tablespoons ice water. That is an inference from the ratios, not from the page: the original quantities are simply not in this fragment.
- CottoleneA cottonseed-oil shortening sold by the N. K. Fairbank Company, discontinued long ago. Substitute an equal weight of vegetable shortening, or lard for more flavour and flake.
- Baking powder in pastryIt turns up in some period paste recipes and is rarely seen now. It puffs the crust slightly rather than leavening it; omitting it costs you almost nothing, and modern pastry relies on steam from cold fat instead.
- Ice water means ice waterIce water -- the ingredient line calls for ice water, though the method itself just says cold water. Fill a measure with water and ice cubes and spoon the water off; warm water starts developing gluten and softens the fat, which is also why the fat is cut in with a knife rather than the hands.
- The hinge: the jelly-roll turnSpreading the reserved tablespoon of fat over the rolled sheet, dredging with flour and rolling it up is a single lamination fold. It is what makes the paste flaky, so do it while everything is still cold and roll the log out gently rather than crushing it flat.
- Chill before rolling outThe original moves straight from rolling the log to lining the tin. Thirty minutes in the refrigerator between the two, wrapped, will keep the layers distinct and stop the crust shrinking down the sides of the pan.
- YieldTwo rounds, each rolled a little larger than the tin: enough for one covered pie, or two single shells. The recipe does not say what size tin.
52 Sunday Dinners (1913) was compiled by Elizabeth O. Hiller and published by the N. K. Fairbank Company, makers of Cottolene, which is why that brand rather than lard or butter appears inside the instructions of a plain pie paste. Cottolene was a cottonseed-oil-and-beef-suet shortening marketed hard from the 1890s onward as a modern, more digestible alternative to lard, and cookbooks like this one were a standard promotional vehicle: a genuinely useful year of menus wrapped around a product placement. The pastry itself is older than the shortening. Rolling the dough around a film of fat and folding it like a jelly roll is a domestic shortcut to puff paste, giving a few flaky layers for a fraction of the labour, and English and American cookery books had been describing versions of it well before Cottolene existed.