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Fruit Pasties or Turnovers
Boil down fruit of any kind with a little sugar, and let it grow cold. Take one pound of puff paste; cut it into as many pieces as you require pasties; roll out in a circular form, and put the fruit on one half, turn the other half over on the fruit and pinch the edge, which should be first wetted with white of egg. Raw fruit may be used, but in this case the paste must be thicker, and not quite so rich. Time to bake, twenty minutes. Sufficient for one dozen and a half.
A skeleton recipe of the kind Cassell's uses throughout its principles section: the method matters, the fruit is left to the cook. A few details need translating.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Bake at around 425F for the stated twenty minutes; puff paste needs the initial blast to lift, and a cooler oven risks greasy, flat layers.
- Cook the fruit down firstThis is the hinge. Juice released inside the pasty turns to steam, blows the seam apart and soaks the base. Reduce the fruit until it mounds on a spoon and holds its shape, then chill it thoroughly so it does not melt the butter in the paste.
- Puff pasteOne pound means one pound of finished paste, not of flour. A 500 g block of all-butter shop puff is a close substitute (one pound is 454 g) and behaves much as the book expects.
- Raw fruit versionThe instruction is sound: raw fruit gives out far more liquid, and a plainer paste rolled a little heavier will hold it. Note that the recipe asks only for thicker and 'not quite so rich' paste, not for a different kind of pastry. A teaspoon of cornflour or a spoonful of ground almonds added to the fruit will help bind the juice.
- White of egg on the seamEgg white is used rather than water because it sets on baking and glues the edge shut. Brush it on the rim only, as the recipe directs.
- Yield and sizeEighteen turnovers from a pound of paste means small ones, rounds of roughly 3 to 3.5 inches with about a tablespoon of fruit each. For a modern dessert-sized pasty, cut 5-inch rounds and expect eight or nine.
- VentingThe original says nothing about it, but a single small slit or a pinprick in the top lets steam escape and keeps the seal intact. Chill the shaped pasties for fifteen minutes before they go in.
Turnover and pasty are the same idea under two names: filling enclosed in a folded round of pastry, portable, eaten in the hand. The pasty form is old and thoroughly workaday in Britain, associated with meals carried out to fields and workings, and the sweet fruit version is its domestic cousin, made with whatever fruit the season gave. The recipe works as a template rather than a single dish, applying equally to apples in autumn, gooseberries in June, plums, damsons or preserved fruit in winter. The distinction it draws between cooked and raw fillings, with a richer paste for the former and a plainer one for the latter, is the practical heart of the entry and still holds.