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Excellent Recipe for Pastry
Four teacups flour, one teacup firm butter, one teacup nice lard, one teacup ice water, one teaspoonful salt. Mix the lard and butter in the flour with a large, flat knife, then add the ice water. Do not touch it with the hands. Take it up in a rough-looking mass, roll it out quickly-not too thin. Cut it with a very sharp knife around the edges of the patty-pans. When intending to bake lemon puddings or cheese-cakes, let the pastry bake four or five minutes before adding butter, as this prevents the pastry from being heavy at the bottom. In summer it is best to put five teacups of flour, instead of four.-Mrs. M.C.C.
A short-crust worked entirely with a knife, in the pattern common to Virginia kitchens before pastry blenders and food processors. The ratio is generous with fat, so the handling instruction is the whole recipe.
- The hinge: never touch itThe point of "do not touch it with the hands" is heat. Warm palms melt butter into the flour and produce a tough, greasy crust instead of layers. A pastry blender, two knives or a few pulses in a processor all do the same job.
- Teacup measuresA nineteenth-century teacup is generally reckoned at about 3/4 cup, though usage varied and many American books of this era used it interchangeably with a full cup. Working at 3/4 cup gives roughly 3 cups flour, 6 oz butter, about 6 oz lard and 12 tablespoons ice water; the flour-to-fat proportion is what matters, and it is a rich one.
- Water is a guide, not a ruleA full teacup of water is more than most flours will want at this fat level. Add it in stages and stop when the mass just holds together in the "rough-looking" state described.
- LardLeaf lard or a good rendered lard gives the tenderness intended here. Modern shelf-stable hydrogenated lard behaves differently and is blander; all-butter works but will be less flaky.
- Patty-pansSmall tartlet or muffin tins. Cut the rounds slightly wider than the pan so the pastry can be eased down without stretching, which is what makes shells shrink.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Pastry this rich wants a hot oven, 425F, so the fat sets before it can leak out; drop to 375F if the filling needs longer baking.
- The partial bake"Before adding butter" most likely means before adding the butter-rich filling of a lemon pudding or cheesecake, though the wording is ambiguous. Four or five minutes at 425F will not set a shell on its own — line it and weight it, and give it 10 to 12 minutes before the filling goes in.
- Summer flourThe extra teacup of flour in hot weather compensates for softening fat. Chilling the bowl, the fat and the flour achieves the same end without altering the proportions.
- YieldAbout enough for twelve to sixteen small tart shells, or two 9-inch crusts. Rest the dough in the refrigerator at least half an hour before rolling.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by some 250 Virginia housekeepers, is a book of attributed recipes — the initials "Mrs. M.C.C." mark this as one woman's household practice rather than a general formula, and the collection often prints several competing versions of the same thing. The half-butter, half-lard crust it describes is often said to have remained common American practice well into the twentieth century: lard for shortness, butter for flavor and browning. "Patty-pans" and the mention of cheesecakes and lemon puddings place this squarely in the tradition of small filled tarts inherited from English cookery, where a cheesecake meant a curd or lemon tartlet, not the dense baked cream cheese dessert the word now describes. The insistence on ice water and a knife instead of hands is the same advice modern pastry writers give, arrived at long before anyone explained gluten development in print.