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Puff-Paste, Household
Beat out the water from ten ounces of butter. Rub two ounces of this into a pound of flour till it is quite fine, and add a pinch of salt. Whisk the white of an egg, and mix with it the juice of a lemon and a small quantity of water. Stir this into the flour to make a paste. Roll it out, and be careful to roll it one way and straight from you. Roll out the remainder of the butter, lay it on the paste, sift a little paste over it and the rolling-pin, fold the paste into three, and roll it out twice. Let it lie in a cool place for some time; an hour will do, but twelve hours will be better. Before using it roll it out very thin; it can scarcely be too thin. Bake in a quick oven. Be careful to handle the paste as lightly as possible, and to make it in a cool place with cool hands.
A rough-puff method: most of the butter goes in as a single slab rather than in the six or seven turns of full puff paste. It behaves well in a modern kitchen provided everything stays cold.
- Weights, not cupsA pound of flour is about 3½ cups measured lightly, and ten ounces of butter is 2½ US sticks. Weigh both if you can; pastry proportions here are tight and cup measures of flour vary by 20 per cent.
- "Beat out the water from the butter"Butter of the period was often wetter and more heavily salted than modern supermarket butter, which is presumably why the instruction is there. Work it briefly with a rolling pin between sheets of parchment to make it pliable; modern unsalted butter should not need draining.
- A probable misprint"Sift a little paste over it and the rolling-pin" should read flour. Dusting the butter slab and the pin with flour is what keeps the layers from welding together.
- The hinge: temperatureThe whole method rests on the butter staying solid and separate from the dough. Chill the flour, use ice water, and if the butter starts to smear or darken the dough, stop and refrigerate for twenty minutes before continuing.
- Egg white and lemon juiceThe acid slackens the gluten a little and the white adds strength and crispness. Roughly one white plus the juice of a lemon, topped up with ice water -- the recipe says only "a small quantity" -- until the dough just comes together.
- Rolling one wayRolling straight away from you and never diagonally keeps the layers even and stops the paste twisting, which makes finished pastry rise crooked. Turn the paste a quarter turn between rolls rather than rolling side to side.
- RestingAn hour is the minimum and overnight is genuinely better, as the book says. Wrap it; an unwrapped paste will skin over in a modern refrigerator.
- A quick ovenThat means 425–450°F (220–230°C). Puff paste needs the initial blast to turn the water in the butter to steam; a moderate oven simply melts the butter out and gives a greasy, flat crust.
- YieldAbout 2 lb of paste; enough for two tart shells, a large covered pie, or roughly two dozen small patties.
"Household" in Cassell's seems to mark a grade rather than a place: the plainer, cheaper version of a preparation, set against the full puff paste. Here ten ounces of butter to sixteen of flour, most of it laid on in one slab, gives a paste that rises well enough for pies and patties without the labour or the expense. The trick of adding lemon juice and egg white is old and widespread in British and French pastry writing, and is generally explained as making the dough more elastic and the baked crust crisper. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, published in London around the turn of the twentieth century, was aimed at households with a cook rather than a brigade, which is why the instructions dwell on cool hands and a cool room.