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Pie Crust
One-half cup of lard and one-half cup of butter. Work into three cups of flour.
Moisten with cold water. Take half the quantity, roll to an inch in thickness. cover with small bits of butter, then form the whole into a roll. With a rollingpin applied crosswise the roll, flatten it, and cover again with bits of butter.
Repeat this operation three times, using in all about a quarter of a cup of butter.
This is for the upper crust. The other half for the under crust needs to be rolled but once, and very thin for the pan. If to be filled with custard, squash, lemon or cream, bake the under crust first. To keep it smooth on the pan cut a piece of paper the size of the crust and partly fill it with flour. This flour can be used for gravies, etc. Of course the paper is to be removed before filling the pie for the final baking. This will make four medium pies, both upper and under crust. This is much cheaper than puff paste and better for ordinary use. Mrs E. C. Gardner.
A plain lard-and-butter paste with a quick rough puff worked into the top crust only — an economical middle ground between short crust and true puff paste. A few of the instructions assume knowledge the original cook had and the page does not spell out.
- The hinge: keep everything coldThe whole point of folding butter into the top crust is to leave visible layers of solid fat between sheets of dough. If the butter softens and smears, you get one dense crust instead of a flaky one. Chill the dough between the folds and again before rolling out.
- "Roll to an inch in thickness"This is the laminating step, not the finished crust. An inch is thicker than most modern rough-puff instructions call for, and rolling it that heavy makes the crosswise flattening awkward; half an inch is easier to handle and gives the same result.
- No salt is listedSalt is absent from the ingredients, as it often is in period pastry recipes. Add about a teaspoon to the three cups of flour or the pastry will taste flat.
- Water"Moisten with cold water" means roughly 6 to 8 tablespoons for three cups of flour, added a spoonful at a time until the dough just coheres. The dough should look slightly underhydrated when you stop.
- LardModern shelf-stable lard is usually hydrogenated and behaves differently from unprocessed leaf lard, which is what a cook of this period was more likely to have had. Rendered leaf lard, sold by butchers, is the closer match; all-butter also works, though the crust will be less tender.
- Blind baking with paper and flourA paper round loosely filled with flour holds the base flat. It works, but the flour must be spread to the edges or the sides slump. Dried beans or pie weights do the same job, and the recipe is right that the flour is still usable afterward for thickening.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Blind-bake a bottom crust at 425F for 15 to 20 minutes, until set and just colouring; finished double-crust fruit pies are usually started at 425F and dropped to 375F.
- YieldFour medium pies with both crusts from three cups of flour implies smallish, shallow tins and crusts rolled very thin. In modern 9-inch plates, expect appreciably fewer.
Nineteenth-century American cookbooks drew a line between puff paste — the laborious many-turn French pastry reserved for company dishes and tarts — and the plainer everyday pie crust. Mrs Gardner's contribution splits the difference: a plain half-lard, half-butter paste for the bottom, and three quick turns of butter folded into the top, where flakiness shows. Her closing remark that it is "much cheaper than puff paste and better for ordinary use" is the whole argument of the recipe. The paper-and-flour blind-baking trick belongs to the same frame of mind: flour was already in the bin and went straight back into the gravy afterward.