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Lard Pastrv
Mix two tea-spoonfuls of baking-powder and a salt-spoonful of salt with two pounds of fine flour. Put a pound and a half of lard into the centre, stir it briskly with a knife, and keep pouring in cold water very gradually until the ingredients are thoroughly mixed. Roll the pastry out, and touch it as little as possible with the fingers. Time, a quarter of an hour to prepare. Probable cost of lard, 10d. per pound.
A plain lard shortcrust from a period when lard was the default pastry fat in British kitchens. The proportions are unusually rich, and the entry gives no baking directions at all, so a few numbers need supplying.
- The hinge: keep everything cold, and barely handle itThe instruction to touch it as little as possible with the fingers is the whole method. Warm lard smears into the flour instead of staying in flakes, and the pastry bakes short and greasy rather than layered. Cold lard, cold water, quick work with the knife.
- The fat ratio is very highA pound and a half of lard to two pounds of flour is a 3:4 ratio, well above the 1:2 of a standard shortcrust. It produces a soft, extremely short paste that is awkward to lift. A modern cook might prefer 1 lb of lard to 2 lb of flour, or half lard and half butter for flavour.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon is about a quarter of a teaspoon. For two pounds of flour that is a light hand; a full teaspoon is closer to modern taste.
- Fine flourPlain white flour, not self-raising and not strong bread flour. The two teaspoons of baking powder are the Victorian habit of lightening a paste slightly; they can be left out entirely for a crisper crust.
- Water quantityNone is given; flours vary in how much they take. Expect somewhere in the region of 150-200 ml of iced water for this quantity, added a little at a time until the dough just coheres.
- No oven givenThe entry gives no baking direction whatever. By modern practice pastry of this kind is usually baked hot, in the region of 400-425F (200-220C), dropping to about 375F (190C) if the filling needs longer; the figures are a modern suggestion, not the book's.
- Lard todaySupermarket block lard is refined and near-flavourless; leaf lard from a butcher is probably closer to what a Victorian kitchen would have had to hand and makes noticeably better pastry. The listed cost of 10d. a pound is a Victorian price and no guide to anything now.
- YieldClose to 4 lb of pastry once the water is in, enough for three or four double-crust pies. It halves and quarters without trouble, and the raw dough freezes well.
Cassell's belongs to the long stretch when lard was a common fat of English pastry-making, alongside butter in richer work. Lard was a by-product of every pig killed, cheap enough to quote at pence per pound, and its large fat crystals make a shorter, more tender crust than butter does, which is why it survived in pork pies, mince pies and plain family tarts long after butter took over in richer cookery. The two teaspoons of baking powder suggest a date somewhere after the 1840s, when British commercial baking powders first appeared: they spread rapidly through British kitchens in the second half of the century, and cookery writers of the period cheerfully added them to doughs that had never needed them. The warning against handling the paste with the fingers is older still, and is a commonplace of English pastry instruction.