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Rich Short Pastry (for Tarts, Etc.)
4 cups Five Roses flour ½ teaspoon baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt ½ cup butter ½ cup lard Cold water to make stiff paste.
Mix all dry ingredients together in a bowl. Rub in butter and lard with the tips of the fingers until as fine as bread crumbs.
About 3 tablespoons of water or cream are sufficient. The yolk of an egg added with the water improves the colour.
A plain hand-rubbed short crust from a Canadian milling company's promotional cookbook. Two figures in it will trip up a modern cook: the water and the fat.
- The water is badly understatedThree tablespoons will not bring four cups of flour together into any kind of paste. Expect to need something nearer 1/2 to 3/4 cup of ice water, added a spoonful at a time until the dough just coheres when pressed. The stated amount may be a compositor's error or may assume a much smaller batch; treat it as a floor, not a target.
- Scale and yieldFour cups of flour with a cup of fat makes roughly 1 3/4 to 2 lb of pastry — enough for about two double-crust nine-inch pies, or two to three dozen small tart shells. Halve it for a single pie.
- Fat ratioOne part fat to four parts flour by volume looks lean for something called "rich short" pastry, though by weight it works out near the conventional half fat to flour. The result tends to be firm and crisp rather than crumbly. If you want more tenderness, take the combined butter and lard up to a scant cup and a half.
- LardLeaf lard or a good rendered pork lard gives a notably flaky crust. Supermarket shelf-stable lard is often hydrogenated and behaves more like shortening; refrigerated leaf lard from a butcher is worth seeking. Butter can carry the whole cup if you prefer, with a slightly tougher, more flavourful result.
- Baking powder in pastryHalf a teaspoon in four cups is a period habit — a small insurance against a heavy crust when flours were less consistent. It does no harm and very little good with modern all-purpose flour, and can be left out.
- Keep everything coldThe fat should stay firm as you work it into the flour. Rubbing in with fingertips warms it faster than a pastry blender or two knives; work quickly, and chill the dough at least 30 minutes before rolling so the gluten relaxes and the fat re-firms.
- Egg yolkThe yolk added with the water enriches and colours the crumb, but it also counts as liquid — reduce the water by about a tablespoon per yolk. A yolk beaten with a little cream and brushed on top before baking gives a browner finish.
- OvenThe recipe gives none. Blind-bake tart shells at 400F for 12-15 minutes with weights, then 5-8 minutes uncovered; filled pies generally start at 425F for 15 minutes and finish at 350F.
The Five Roses Cook Book was issued by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company of Montreal in the 1910s and distributed by the sackful — it went into Canadian kitchens as advertising for Five Roses flour, and it is often said that for many rural households it was the only cookbook in the house. The recipes are contributed and edited into a house style, which may account for the flatness of the prose. The half-butter, half-lard combination was standard practice long before anyone explained it in terms of melting points: lard is generally credited with giving flakiness, while butter supplies flavour and browning. Note too the confidence that the reader knows what a stiff paste feels like in the hand, and needs no oven temperature — a book written for cooks with wood ranges and no thermometers, who judged heat by holding a hand in the oven.