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SUET PASTRY, RICH (for Meat Pies, etc)
If the following directions are attended to, suet may be used instead of butter for making puff-paste for meat pies which are to be served hot. If they are to be eaten when cold, butter had better be used. The difference in the expense between suet and good butter is considerable, and bad butter will spoil anything. Take some dry veal or beef-kidney suet. Free it entirely from skin and fibre, chop it small, then pound it in a mortar, and whilst pounding keep adding a tea-spoonful of salad-oil till the suet looks like butter. If oil is not at hand, fresh butter may be used instead. Two ounces will be sufficient for half a pound of suet. Proceed according to the directions given for puff-paste (see PASTE, PUFF, OR FEUILLETAGE). Suet, 10d. per pound.
A cost-saving substitution for butter in rough puff pastry, with one real constraint: suet sets hard and waxy as it cools, which is why the original insists the pie be eaten hot.
- The hinge: serve hotBeef and veal suet melt at roughly 113-120F, well above body temperature, so pastry made with it turns claggy and tallowy the moment it cools. Take the instruction literally and serve straight from the oven; for a cold pie, use butter.
- What suet to buyKidney suet is the firm, dry fat from around the kidneys, and a butcher will supply it whole. Packaged shredded suet is already dry and free of membrane, and can be used without pounding, though it is often blended with flour or rice flour, so allow for that in the mix.
- Free it from skin and fibreAny membrane left in the fat will show up as tough flecks and will tear the layers when you roll. Chill the fat hard, then pull the papery skin away with your fingers before chopping.
- Pounding, without a mortarThe aim is a smooth plastic fat that behaves like butter rather than crumbs. A food processor pulsed in short bursts does the same work; keep the fat cold and stop as soon as it comes together, since warm suet turns greasy.
- Salad-oilIn this period salad-oil generally means olive oil. Any neutral oil works. Note that the oil is added a teaspoonful at a time until the suet looks like butter; the stated 'two ounces ... for half a pound of suet' follows the mention of butter, so it most directly fixes the butter substitute at 2 oz to 8 oz suet, about 4 tablespoons.
- Puff-paste proportionsThe cross-reference is to the book's own puff-paste entry, which is not reproduced here. Puff paste of this period is typically made with roughly equal weights of flour and fat, cold water to bind, and repeated folding and rolling. Rest the dough 20-30 minutes in the refrigerator between turns.
- OvenLayered pastry needs a hot oven to set the structure before the fat runs out. Bake at 425-450F for the first 15-20 minutes, then drop to 375F if the filling needs longer.
- YieldHalf a pound of suet with the same weight of flour gives enough pastry to cover a large pie dish, or to line and lid a nine-inch one.
- The price note"Suet, 10d. per pound" is Cassell's usual costing line for the era, and has no bearing on the method.
Suet was the working fat of the British kitchen well into the twentieth century: cheap, keeping far better than butter in an unrefrigerated larder, and firm enough at room temperature to hold its shape in a crust. Cassell's frankness about money here is characteristic of the book, which was written for households that had to weigh a pound of butter against a pound of kidney fat and knew that rancid butter would ruin the whole pie. The trick of pounding suet with oil until it "looks like butter" is an attempt to give a dry, granular fat the smooth spreading quality that lamination requires, since suet will not smear into thin sheets the way butter does. British cooks kept faith with suet longest in suet crusts and boiled puddings, where its high melting point is an advantage rather than a defect, and shredded packet suet remains a supermarket staple in the UK long after it vanished from American shelves.