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Plaits of Pastry
Make half a pound of puff-paste, and give it nine turns (see PUFF-PASTE). Roll it out till it is one-eighth of an inch in thickness, and cut it into strips the third of an inch wide. Fasten three, four, or five of these together at the ends, moistening the pastry with a little water to make the pieces stick together; plait them evenly and loosely, and fasten them at the other end. Place the plaits on an oiled baking-tin, brush over them beaten egg, and bake in a well-heated oven. These plaits are useful for ornamenting open tarts, or they may be sent to table on a separate dish, with small portions of jam of various colours placed in the empty spaces. Time to bake, about twenty minutes. Probable cost, 1d. each.
A garnish rather than a dish: braided ropes of puff pastry baked crisp and used to dress the rim of an open tart or served alone with jam in the gaps. The whole thing succeeds or fails on how cold the pastry is when it goes into the oven.
- Keep it coldPlaiting warms and stretches the dough, which is what makes puff pastry slump and leak butter. Braid the strips, then chill the finished plaits on the tray for 20-30 minutes before they see the oven.
- Nine turnsCassell's puff-paste is built by repeated rolling and folding; nine turns is more than most modern recipes ask for, six being the usual figure. All-butter shop-bought puff pastry, rolled to the given thickness, behaves much the same here.
- "A well-heated oven"425-450F. Puff pastry needs the initial blast to turn the water in the butter to steam before the layers set; a moderate oven gives you flat, greasy braids.
- Strip dimensionsAn eighth of an inch thick and a third of an inch wide is deliberately slight; the strips rise considerably as they bake. Cut them with a ruler and a pizza wheel or a sharp knife; a blunt edge seals the layers and stops the rise.
- Plait looselyThe instruction is doing real work. A tight braid has nowhere to expand and bursts at the seams; leave visible gaps and they close up in the oven.
- Oiled tinSubstitute parchment on an ungreased sheet. Oil on a hot tin encourages the bases to fry and colour before the tops are done.
- Egg washBrush the tops only. Egg running down the cut sides glues the layers together and the pastry rises unevenly.
- TimingTwenty minutes suits a larger, thicker plait. At the widths given, start checking at twelve to fifteen minutes and pull them when they are deep gold and dry-sounding underneath.
- Yield and assemblyHalf a pound of paste gives roughly a dozen plaits six to eight inches long. Add the jam only after they have cooled completely, or it soaks in and the layers collapse.
- "1d. each"A penny apiece in pre-decimal currency, quoted as an estimate for a household cook keeping accounts. It has no useful modern equivalent beyond signalling that these were considered a cheap flourish.
Cassell's places this among the ornamental work expected of a Victorian kitchen, where a tart was not finished until it had been dressed. Plaited, twisted and cut-out pastry was one way of dressing a dish with puff-paste, which was laborious to make. The suggestion that the plaits be sent to table on their own dish with jam of various colours between them reflects the period's taste for the set-piece sweet course, where visual arrangement counted for as much as flavour. Something similar survives in the jam-filled pastry twists sold in bakeries today, though the braiding of three, four or five separate strips is now uncommon.