Chopped Paste
2 cups flour 2 tablespoons lard 2/3 cup butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Cold water Wash butter. Mix salt with flour, put in chopping tray, add lard and butter, and chop until well mixed. Moisten to a dough with cold water. Toss on floured cloth (Magic Cover), pat, and roll out. Fold so as to make three layers, turn half-way round, pat, and roll out; repeat. Should the butter be too hard, it will not mix readily with the flour, in which case the result will be a tough crust. Omit lard, and use all butter, if preferred.
A rough-puff pastry made by chopping cold fat into flour rather than rubbing it in by hand. The whole method depends on the butter staying cold but not rock hard.
- The hinge: butter temperatureThe recipe says it plainly ("Should the butter be too hard, it will not mix readily with the flour... the result will be a tough crust") and it is the thing most likely to ruin the batch. Butter straight from a modern refrigerator is very hard; let it stand 10-15 minutes so it yields to a chopper without smearing.
- "Wash butter"This means working the butter in a bowl of cold water with a spoon or paddle to press out buttermilk and excess brine, then patting it dry. It was done because farm and grocery butter was salty and inconsistent. With modern unsalted butter, skip it entirely.
- Chopping trayA wooden bowl or tray used with a curved rocking blade. A food processor pulsed 10-12 times does the same work, as does a pastry blender in any wide bowl. Stop while pieces are still pea-sized and visible.
- Magic CoverEvidently a proprietary name for a pastry cloth; the recipe gives no more than the parenthesis. Any canvas pastry cloth, or a lightly floured counter, serves; the point is a surface that holds a film of flour so the dough does not stick under repeated rolling.
- Water quantityNone is given; flour absorbency varies, and period recipes commonly leave it open. Expect roughly 5 to 7 tablespoons of ice water for 2 cups of flour. Add it a tablespoon at a time and stop when the dough just coheres when squeezed.
- Folding and restingThe three-layer fold, quarter turn, and repeat is a rough-puff turn. The original does not mention chilling; give the dough 20-30 minutes in the refrigerator between turns and again before rolling out, or the butter will work into the flour and the layers will be lost.
- Yield and baking2 cups of flour makes enough for a double-crust 9-inch pie or two single shells. The recipe gives no baking directions; layered crusts of this kind generally benefit from a hot start to set the layers before the heat is lowered, but the actual temperature and time depend on the filling.