Tart Shells
Roll out thin a nice puff-paste, cut out with a glass or biscuit cutter, with a wine-glass or smaller cup cut out the center of two out of three of these, lay the rings thus made on the third, and bake immediately; or shells may be made by lining patty-pans with paste. If the paste is light, the shells will be fine, and may be used for tarts or oyster patties. Filled with jelly and covered with meringue (table-spoon sugar to white of one egg), and browned in oven, they are very nice to serve for tea.
No ingredient of doubtful quality should enter into the composition of puddings. Suet must be perfectly sweet, and milk should be fresh and without the least unpleasant flavor. Suet when over kept and milk soured or curdled in the slightest degree, ruins a pudding which would otherwise be most delicious. Dried currants, such as are sold in the market, need very careful and thorough washing (after which they must be dried in a napkin), and raisins should be rubbed in a coarse towel to remove stems and all dirt from the outside, and afterward carefully seeded. Almonds and spices must be very finely pounded, and the rinds of oranges or lemons rasped or grated lightly off (the white part of the peel has no flavor and is an injury).
In making puddings, always beat the eggs separately, straining the yolks and adding the whites the last thing. If boiled milk is used, let it cool somewhat before adding the eggs; when fruit is added, stir it in at the last. Puddings are either baked, boiled or steamed; rice, bread, custard, and fruit puddings require a moderate heat; batter and corn starch, a rather quick oven. Always bake them as soon as mixed. Add a pinch of salt to any pudding.
Boiled puddings are lighter when boiled in a cloth and allowed full room to swell, but many use either a tin mold or bowl with cloth tied over it; grease the former well on the inside with lard or butter, and in boiling do not let the water reach quite to the top. The pudding-bag should be made of firm drilling, tapering from top to bottom, and rounded on the corners; stitch and fell the (225) seams, which should be outside when in use, and sew a tape to the seam, about three inches from top. Wring the bag out of hot water, flour the inside well, pour in the pudding (which should be well beaten the instant before pouring), tie securely, leaving room to swell (especially when made of Indian meal, bread, rice, or crackers), and place in a kettle with a saucer at the bottom to prevent burning; immediately pour in enough boiling water to entirely cover the bag, which must be turned several times, keeping it boiling constantly, filling up from the tea-kettle when needed. If the pudding is boiled in a bowl, grease, fill, and cover with a square of drilling wrung out of hot water, floured and tied on. To use a pan, tie a cloth tightly over the rim, bringing the ends back together, and pinning them over the top of the pan; the pudding may then be lifted out easily by a strong fork put through the ends or corners of the cloth. Open bag a little to let steam escape, and serve immediately, as delay ruins all boiled pudding. For plum puddings, invert the pan when put in the kettle, and the pudding will not become water-soaked. When the pudding is done, give whatever it is boiled in a quick plunge into cold water, and turn out at once, serving immediately. As a general rule, boiled puddings require double the time required for baked. Steaming is safer than either boiling or baking, as the pudding is sure to be light and wholesome. Put on over cold water and do not remove cover while steaming. In making sauces, do not boil after the butter is added. Use brown or powdered sugar for sauces. In place of wine or brandy, flavor with juice of the grape, or any other fruit prepared for this purpose in its season by boiling and bottling and sealing while hot. Pudding cloths, however coarse, should never be washed with soap, but in clear, clean water, dried as quickly as possible, and kept dry and out of dust in a drawer or cupboard free from smell. Dates are an excellent substitute for sugar in Graham or any other pudding. Fruit for preserving should always be gathered in perfectly dry weather and be free from dust and the morning and evening dew. Never use tin, iron or pewter spoons or skimmers for preserves.
The recipe proper is the first four sentences; everything after "No ingredient of doubtful quality" is the book's general essay on puddings, sauces and preserving, printed here as running matter at the foot of the page. The notes below deal chiefly with the shells.
- The hinge: bake immediatelyPuff paste must go into the oven cold and rest before it. Cut the rounds and rings, chill them on the sheet for 15–20 minutes if the kitchen is warm, then bake straight away — paste left to sit at room temperature slumps and the layers weld together instead of lifting.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no oven direction. Puff paste of this kind is normally baked hot: read it as 425-450F, dropping to 375F once the shells have risen and set, so the interior dries out without the edges scorching.
- "A glass or biscuit cutter"A tumbler of about 3 inches gives a serviceable tart shell; the wine-glass or small cup cutting the centers should be roughly 2 inches, leaving a half-inch ring. Cut straight down and do not twist, which seals the cut edge and stops the rise.
- Patty-pansThese are small shallow tins, closest today to a standard muffin tin or individual tartlet tins. Line them with paste, prick the bases, and weight with beans or pie weights if the shells are to be filled after baking.
- YieldNone is given, and none can be reckoned from the text; it depends on the size of the batch of paste and of the cutters used. The cut-out centers can be baked alongside as lids.
- Puff-paste, then and nowPuff-paste recipes of the period generally use equal or nearly equal weights of butter (or butter and lard) to flour, rolled and folded repeatedly. All-butter commercial frozen puff pastry is a fair substitute; keep it cold at every stage.
- The meringueOne tablespoon of sugar to a white is a soft, lean meringue by current practice, where two tablespoons per white is usual. It browns quickly — five to eight minutes at 350F is enough — and it will weep if it sits, so top and brown shortly before serving.
- Oyster pattiesIf filling the shells with oysters, the oysters want two or three minutes in their own liquor with a little cream, just until the edges ruffle; longer cooking toughens them.
- On the appended pudding notes"Drilling" is a stout twill cotton for pudding cloths; "Indian meal" is cornmeal; "moderate heat" is 350F and "a rather quick oven" 400–425F. The warning against tin, iron or pewter for preserves is about metallic off-flavors from acid fruit — stainless steel and enamel are fine.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping came out of Marysville, Ohio, in 1877, compiled by Estelle Woods Wilcox from contributions gathered by a Congregational church group, and it went through many printings across the Midwest. Tart shells of this kind are rounds with rings stacked on top to build a wall, a cheap way to get the effect of a vol-au-vent without cutting one from a thick block of paste. That the same shell is offered for jelly with meringue at tea or for creamed oysters says a good deal about how the period cooked: one competent pastry, one shape, pressed into service at either end of the meal. The long block of pudding advice that follows is typical of the book's layout, which packs general instruction into whatever column space a short recipe leaves empty.