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German Paste
Mix one pound of fine flour with two ounces of pounded sugar, a pinch of salt, and the grated rind of half a lemon. Rub in half a pound of butter, and make it into a smooth paste with the yolks of two eggs beaten with a table-spoonful of water. Roll the paste out in thin sheets, and fold it over two or three times. If intended for fruit pies or tarts, the sugar is better omitted. Time, twenty minutes to prepare. Probable cost, 10d. for this quantity.
A sweet short paste — essentially a pâte sucrée under a Victorian name. The proportions are sound and translate directly; only the units and the handling need comment.
- The quantities in cupsOne pound of fine flour is about 3½ cups (450 g); two ounces of pounded sugar is a generous ¼ cup (55 g); half a pound of butter is two sticks (225 g). The yolks and a tablespoon of water are the only liquid, so the dough will look dry before it comes together.
- "Pounded sugar"Sugar crushed fine in a mortar, between granulated and icing sugar. Caster sugar is the closest modern equivalent; ordinary granulated will leave a slightly gritty crumb unless you pulse it briefly in a grinder.
- "Fine flour"Finely bolted, well-sifted white flour. Plain all-purpose works; British plain flour or a pastry flour gives a more tender result than bread flour, which will toughen a paste this rich.
- Keep everything coldThis is the hinge. Half a pound of butter to a pound of flour is a high fat ratio, and warm hands will smear it into a greasy dough that bakes hard. Rub the butter in while it is firm, stop while the mixture still looks like coarse crumbs, and chill the dough at least 30 minutes before rolling.
- The foldingRolling thin and folding two or three times is a light lamination — it gives flakiness without the labour of a full puff paste. Do it cold, and rest the dough again after the last fold or it will shrink in the tin.
- Omitting the sugarThe recipe gives no reason, but the likely one is that sugar browns fast and a sweetened shell under a juicy fruit filling can colour at the rim before the fruit is done. Leave it out for fruit pies and keep it for jam tarts and small sweet cases.
- BakingNo oven is specified. Blind-bake tart shells at 375–400°F (190–200°C) until pale gold, roughly 15–20 minutes with weights and a further 5–10 without; the sweetened version browns quicker and wants the lower end.
- YieldEnough for two 9-inch tart shells, or one double-crust pie with trimmings. It freezes well wrapped, raw, for a couple of months.
- "Probable cost, 10d."Tenpence in pre-decimal currency — the book quoted household prices as a matter of course, and the figure tells you more about Victorian budgeting than about anything you will pay today.
"German paste" is often said to be the name nineteenth-century English kitchens gave to a rich egg-and-sugar short crust of the sort French cooks called pâte sucrée and Austrian and German bakers used for Mürbeteig. The label is loose; Victorian cookery books borrowed national adjectives to distinguish one variation from another rather than to make any firm claim of origin, and "German" here probably signals the sweetened, egg-enriched character associated with Continental pastry work and the lemon rind that flavours it. What seems of its period is the assumption behind the entry: a household cook may well have kept several distinct pastes in her repertoire and chosen between them by dish, which is why the recipe closes by telling her when to leave the sugar out.