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PASTRY, GOOD PLAIN (another way)
Mix a tea-spoonful of salt with a pound of flour. Rub in lightly six ounces of butter or lard, or half butter and half lard, and stir water in briskly with a fork. When the mixture is smooth and compact, roll it out two or three times, and it is ready for use. Time, ten minutes to make. Probable cost, 8d. per pound.
A plain shortcrust in the English style, with fat rubbed in rather than laminated. The proportions are 1 lb flour to 6 oz fat, which is a little lean by modern habit but rolls and handles well.
- Weights in cupsA pound of flour is about 3½ cups (450 g); 6 oz of fat is 1½ sticks of butter (170 g). Weighing is more reliable here, as the water quantity depends on how much flour you actually have.
- The water is unmeasured on purposeExpect roughly 6-8 tablespoons of ice-cold water for this quantity, added a spoonful at a time. Stop when the dough just coheres under the fork; a wet plain pastry toughens as it bakes.
- Keep everything coldThe instruction to rub in "lightly" is the hinge. The fat should stay in flattened flakes, not melt into the flour, so use cold butter or lard and work with fingertips only, or pulse briefly in a processor.
- "Roll it out two or three times"The recipe says only to roll it out two or three times and does not specify folding between rolls; repeated rolling of this sort gives a modest flakiness without the labour of true puff. Resting the dough in the refrigerator before the final roll will relax the gluten, though the book allows only ten minutes for the whole business.
- Butter or lardThe recipe offers either, or half and half: lard gives shortness and a tender crumb, butter gives flavour and colour. Modern shortening or block vegetable fat substitutes for lard in the same weight.
- BakingNo oven is given; this is a base paste to be used with whatever it encloses. Modern equivalents: for a blind-baked case, 400F/200C for 15 minutes lined and weighted, then 10 minutes uncovered; for a covered pie, 425F/220C to set the crust, then down to 350F/180C.
- YieldA pound of flour makes roughly one 9-inch double-crust pie with some to spare, or two to three single crusts. The dough keeps three days refrigerated and freezes well.
- Cost noteThe "8d. per pound" is the book's own estimate of what the ingredients would cost, and is of historical interest only.
Cassell's dictionary gives several versions of "good plain pastry" in sequence, and the repetition tells you how central it was: a nineteenth-century English kitchen produced pastry constantly, for meat pies, fruit pies, tarts and puddings, and each household cook needed a dependable base recipe before attempting the puff and flaky doughs treated elsewhere in the book. The fat ratio here, six ounces to the pound of flour, is lower than the higher proportions of richer pastes; the option of lard reflects economy, butter being the costlier choice. The habit of quoting a probable cost per pound was a hallmark of Cassell's, aimed at mistresses budgeting a household and at the cooks answerable to them.