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Paste, Scraps of, How to Use
If any scraps or shreds of paste are left after making pies or tarts, gather them into one lump, and roll this out until it is as thin as possible. Stamp it into fancy shapes, prick these lightly with a fork, place them on a baking-tin, and bake in a quick oven until they are firm, without being browned. Sift powdered sugar over them, and serve prettily arranged round a dish of stewed fruit. Time, about eight minutes to bake.
A thrift note that doubles as a garnish recipe: offcuts of pastry rolled thin, cut, baked and sugared to edge a dish of stewed fruit.
- "Quick oven"Broadly a hot oven, roughly 400-450F (200-230C) in modern terms. The heat sets the shapes fast; the recipe's own instruction is that they be firm without browning, so keep to the lower end if in doubt.
- Watch the colour, not the clockEight minutes is right for genuinely thin trimmings, but scraps vary in thickness. Pull them when they are firm and dry to the touch and still blond; browned pastry looks wrong against pale stewed fruit and tastes of the second rolling.
- Rest the gathered scrapsTrimmings have already been worked once and the gluten is tight. Press them into a flat lump rather than kneading, chill 20 minutes, then roll. Skipping this gives shapes that shrink and buckle in the tin.
- "Paste" means pastryIn Cassell's this is any pie or tart dough - short crust, sweet crust, or puff trimmings. Puff scraps will not laminate properly a second time and will rise unevenly; short paste is the better candidate for neat shapes.
- PrickingThe fork holes let steam out so the shapes stay flat. The recipe asks for light pricking only.
- Powdered sugarIn this period, sugar pounded and sifted fine rather than granulated; modern icing (confectioners') sugar is the nearest substitute. Sift it over while the shapes are just warm so it clings.
- Yield and assemblyThe recipe gives no quantities; you get whatever the trimmings allow, so the yield depends entirely on how much paste is left and the size of the cutter. Bake them the same day they are cut, cool completely on a rack, and arrange them around the fruit only at the table -- they soften on contact with syrup.
Cassell's belongs to a tradition of household cookery in which nothing that cost money was thrown away, and pastry - flour, butter and labour - was worth reclaiming. The instruction describes a habit rather than a dish: what a cook does with the board after the pie goes in the oven. Cutting the leftovers into "fancy shapes" with tin cutters is the sort of thing often said to have been common in Victorian kitchens, the same stamps serving for biscuits, pastry leaves and the ornaments laid on top of raised pies. The result is close to what later cookbooks call pastry crisps or fleurons, and the pairing with stewed fruit belongs to a period when compotes of apple, plum or rhubarb were served with something crisp set around the rim.