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Paste, Puff, or Feuilletage
This paste, though decidedly superior to every other kind in appearance and taste, is rather indigestible for delicate persons. Good sweet salt butter, which has been well washed in cold water, squeezed with the hands to free it from the salt, and afterwards wrung in a cloth to take away all the moisture, is the best material which can be used for it. The consistency of the butter is of considerable importance. If it is too hard, it will not easily mix with the flour, but if it is too soft, the paste will be entirely spoilt, in consequence of the butter breaking through the edges whilst it is being rolled. As the difficulty experienced is generally to get the butter sufficiently cool, many cooks place it upon ice before using it for the pastry. In hot weather, the paste should be placed on a marble slab for a few minutes, to keep it cool between each turn. If very flaky pastry is required, the paste may be brushed lightly over each time it is rolled with white of egg. In making puff-paste proceed as follows. Put on a clean pastry-board or slab one pound of best flour thoroughly dried and sifted; make a hole in the centre, and put into it half a tea-spoonful of salt, and rather less than half a pint of water. The exact quantity of water cannot be given, but experience will soon enable the cook to determine when the paste is sufficiently stiff. It should be mixed in gradually with a knife, and should form a clear smooth paste, being worked lightly with the hands, until it ceases to adhere to them or to the board. Let it remain on the slab for two minutes. Have ready prepared three-quarters of a pound of butter, freed from salt and moisture. Flatten the paste till it is an inch thick, lay the butter in the centre, and fold over the four sides of the paste, so as to form a square, and completely hide the butter. Leave this to cool for two or three minutes, then dredge the slab and the paste with flour, and roll the paste out till it is three feet in length, and be especially careful that the butter does not break through the flour. (See what was said above on this subject.) Fold over a third of the length from one end, and lay the other third upon it. This folding into three is called giving one turn. Put the paste in a cool place for ten minutes, give it two more turns, rest again, and let it have another two. This will be in all five turns, and these will generally be found sufficient. If, however, the pastry is to be used for vol-auvents or patties, six or seven times will be required. Gather the paste together and it is ready for use, and may be used at once, or left till next day. Handle it all the time as lightly as possible, and remember to dredge a little flour over it, the board, and the rolling-pin every time the dough is rolled, to keep it from sticking. French cooks mix the yolks of two eggs with the flour and water in the first instance. If a very rich paste is required, a pound of butter may be put with a pound of flour. Probable cost, 1s. 2d. per pound.
A classic French-style rough-free puff paste, written for cooks working on cold marble in a kitchen without refrigeration. The instructions are sound; most of the updating is a matter of units, butter and oven heat.
- Skip the butter-washingThe kneading, squeezing and wringing exists only to drive salt and moisture out of Victorian salted butter, which was generally salted more heavily than modern butter. Use unsalted butter instead, taken from the fridge and brought to a cool, pliable firmness.
- Quantities1 lb flour is about 450 g; ¾ lb butter about 340 g; the "very rich" version is equal weights of each. Half an imperial pint is roughly 285 ml, so "rather less" comes to about 240–260 ml — add it gradually, as the book says, since flours vary.
- Butter temperature is the hingeThe paste and the butter block must be the same firmness — cool and pliable, not brittle, not greasy. If the butter shatters it will not laminate; if it softens it bursts the dough and the layers fuse. Chill between every turn, and in a warm kitchen chill longer than the ten minutes given.
- What a "turn" meansOne turn is rolling out and folding in three, a single letter fold. Five turns give 243 butter layers, which is ample; the six or seven advised for vol-au-vents give thinner and more numerous layers.
- Three feet of rollingRoll to about 90 cm long by roughly 20–25 cm wide, keeping the edges square. Corners that go round mean the layers at the ends are being lost.
- Dried and sifted flourFlour was once stored in damp larders and needed drying by the fire. Modern bagged flour needs neither drying nor sifting, though a plain low-protein flour laminates more tenderly than strong bread flour.
- The egg-white washBrushing between rolls is optional and does add crispness, but it also glues layers together if applied heavily. A very light film only.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given because ranges had none. Puff paste needs a quick oven — 425–450°F (220–230°C) — so the water in the dough and butter turns to steam fast; a moderate oven simply melts the butter out and the layers collapse.
- Yield and keepingThe quantities given come to roughly 1 kg of paste. It keeps two days covered in the fridge and freezes well, best after its final turn.
Feuilletage — literally "leafing" or "foliating" — is the French name for laminated paste, and Cassell's use of it alongside the plain English "puff paste" is a reminder of how much French vocabulary late-Victorian professional cookery carried. Its invention is traditionally credited to the painter Claude Lorrain, said to have trained as a pastry cook, and sometimes to a Parisian pâtissier named Feuillet; neither story is documented, and layered butter-and-flour doughs are described in European kitchens well before either man. What is clear from this entry is how much of the technique was a fight against temperature: the marble slab, the ice, the resting in a cool place and the anxious warnings about butter breaking through all belong to a kitchen with a coal range at one end and no refrigeration at all. The opening remark that the paste is "rather indigestible for delicate persons" is equally of its time, when rich pastry was discussed in something close to medical terms. The costing of 1s. 2d. per pound is simply the price of using three parts butter to four of flour.