Plain Paste
One and one-half cups of flour One-half teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt One-third cup of lard Cold water Work the lard into the flour very carefully and mix into a dough with water sufficient to roll. Handle with great care, as the more the dough is handled, the less tender it becomes.
A basic single-crust pie pastry, written when "paste" was the ordinary word for pie dough. The proportions are sound; only the brand name and the missing water quantity need translating.
- The hingeEverything here rests on the final sentence: minimal handling. Work the fat in until the mixture looks like coarse crumbs with some pea-sized pieces, add water, gather the dough, and stop. Overworked pastry develops gluten and bakes tough.
- Larkin Table SaltLarkin was a Buffalo mail-order soap and grocery company whose cookbooks named its own products throughout. Use any fine table salt, half a teaspoon as written.
- Water quantityThe original gives none, only "water sufficient to roll," and flour absorbency varies. Figure on 3 to 4 tablespoons of ice-cold water, added a spoonful at a time, stopping when the dough just holds together when pressed.
- LardLeaf lard or rendered pork fat gives the flakiest result, and lard generally was a common American pie fat in this period. Modern hydrogenated shortening-style lard from a supermarket shelf works but tastes flatter; an equal weight of chilled butter or shortening will substitute, about 2 1/2 ounces.
- TemperatureNothing in the text says cold, but the fat should be firm and the water iced. Warm lard smears into the flour instead of staying in flakes.
- YieldEnough for one 8- or 9-inch single crust, or a top crust for a deep dish. Double it for a two-crust pie.
- BakingThe recipe assumes the pie filling dictates the oven. Blind-baked alone, a shell wants 425F for 12 to 15 minutes, docked and weighted so it does not slump.
- RestingNot called for here, but wrapping the dough and chilling it 30 minutes before rolling relaxes it and makes the minimal-handling instruction much easier to follow.
"Paste" is the older English term for pie dough, surviving in "pastry" and "puff paste," and household books of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries graded it from plain paste through short paste to the laminated puff kinds. Plain paste is the workhorse: flour, salt, one fat, water, no egg and no sugar, meant for meat pies as readily as for fruit. Lard was the standard American pie fat well into the twentieth century, cheap and often rendered at home, and its large fat crystals are often said to be the reason old lard crusts have a reputation for flakiness that all-butter doughs achieve differently. The appearance of "Larkin Table Salt" in the ingredient list marks this as a premium cookbook, the sort of volume a mail-order company gave away or sold cheaply to customers buying its soaps and groceries by the club order; the recipes were genuine, and the branded ingredients were the point.