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Paste, French, for Meat Pies, Hot or Cold
Put into a bowl a pound of flour, and rub lightly into this half a pound of fresh butter. Add half a tea-spoonful of salt, and make the mixture up into a smooth stiff paste, by stirring into it two fresh eggs which have been beaten up with rather less than a quarter of a pint of water. Roll the pastry out, give it two or three turns, and bake as soon as possible. Time, ten minutes to prepare. Probable cost, 1s. 2d.
A half-fat egg pastry with a couple of folds — closer to a rough puff than to shortcrust, and firm enough to hold its shape around a meat filling. Two things need translating: the imperial liquid measure and the fact that the stated time is preparation only.
- Weights and liquidA pound of flour is about 3 1/2 cups; half a pound of butter is two sticks (8 oz). A quarter of an imperial pint is 5 fl oz, so "rather less than" that is roughly 1/2 cup of water beaten with the two eggs — hold some back and add it only as needed, since flour absorbency varies.
- Rub in lightly, and keep everything coldRub in lightly -- the recipe says so explicitly. Rubbing in leaves the butter in small pieces through the flour, and the two or three turns do the rest; the recipe specifies only 'fresh' butter and gives no instruction about temperature.
- "Give it two or three turns"This means roll out, fold in three, turn a quarter turn and repeat two or three times, as for puff pastry — not stir it two or three more times. No long resting period is implied, which is why the paste is described as ready to bake at once.
- Stiff, not softThe recipe calls for 'a smooth stiff paste', firm enough to stand as a lid or line a mould without slumping. If it feels soft enough for a fruit tart, it is too wet for this job.
- "Bake as soon as possible"Sound advice with a caveat: modern kitchens are warmer than a Victorian larder. If the butter has begun to soften during the folding, 20 minutes in the refrigerator before baking will do more good than harm.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives none. As modern guidance: for a covered meat pie with cooked filling, 400-425F until the crust is set and coloured; for a raised pie baked from raw, start hot and drop to about 350F so the interior cooks through.
- Timing"Time, ten minutes to prepare" refers to making the paste alone. Baking time belongs to whichever pie recipe this is serving.
- YieldThe recipe states none. A pound of flour with half a pound of butter would plausibly make a double-crust pie of 9-10 inches, or line and lid a small raised pie mould.
- Probable cost1s 2d — about fourteen pence in pre-decimal money, an unremarkable sum for a family pie crust at the time, and a reminder that butter was the expensive item on the list.
The high proportion of butter to flour, the whole eggs and the few turns place this paste between shortcrust and true puff — sturdy enough to be cut cold in slices, rich enough to be worth eating, which is exactly what a cold meat pie needs. Cassell's, published in London from the 1870s, was written for households that were absorbing French professional technique through cookery books rather than through French cooks, and a paste like this let a competent home cook produce something that looked like it had come from a pastry kitchen.