Pie Crust
Two coffee-cups butter, two of lard, two of ice water and seven of flour, a little salt; this will make six pies.
A plain lard-and-butter crust given in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what she was doing. The proportions work, but the measure and the yield both need translating.
- The coffee-cupIn American kitchens of this period a coffee cup was taken as roughly a standard cup, sometimes a little less. Read the recipe as 2 cups butter, 2 cups lard, 2 cups ice water and 7 cups flour, and adjust the water down if the dough comes together sooner.
- Weigh it if you canVolume-measured flour varies considerably depending on how it is scooped. Seven cups is about 2 lb (roughly 850 g); the two cups of butter and two of lard come to roughly 2 lb between them. That is a fat-to-flour ratio near 1:1, richer than most modern all-butter crusts.
- Hold back the waterTwo cups of water for seven of flour is more than most pie doughs will take. Add it a few tablespoons at a time and stop as soon as the dough holds when squeezed; excess water plus working develops gluten and gives a tough, shrinking shell.
- The lard mattersThe recipe does not specify a grade. Lard was the ordinary shortening of the period, and leaf lard was the grade prized for pastry. Modern hydrogenated shelf-stable lard behaves differently and tastes of very little; refrigerated leaf lard or a good rendered pork fat is closer to what a cook of the period would have had.
- Keep everything coldThe ice water is the only temperature instruction in the recipe, and it is the hinge. Cut the fats in while they are still firm enough to stay in visible flakes, and chill the dough at least half an hour before rolling.
- YieldThe recipe says six pies and gives no tin size or crust count. The quantity of dough is generous enough for six single shells and possibly more, so divide it according to how many crusts you actually want, and chill the portions before rolling.
- No baking directions givenThe book leaves the baking to the filling recipe. For a blind-baked shell, line and weight it and bake at 425F until set and pale gold, then lower to 350F to dry it out.
- Making lessThe batch is sized for a household baking pies in quantity. Quartering it gives about 1 3/4 cups flour with 1 cup total fat (1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup lard).
Recipes like this one, stated as a string of cup counts with no method at all, are typical of late nineteenth-century community and household cookbooks, which set down proportions for readers assumed to know the handling already. The pairing of butter with lard is the older American compromise, lard for flakiness and keeping quality, butter for flavor, and it held its place until vegetable shortening -- cottonseed-based products from the later nineteenth century, and Crisco from 1911 -- began to displace lard in home baking. The instruction to make six pies at once also suggests something about the period's kitchen rhythm: pastry was mixed in quantity on baking day.