Puff Paste
One pound flour, to be made up with cold water and beaten fifteen minutes. One pound butter (or half lard, if you have not enough butter), which must be spread on the dough four times and rolled in.
It must be made thin, put in tins, and baked in a moderate oven.
A terse nineteenth-century puff paste: equal weights of flour and fat, with the fat laid on in four separate turns. The proportions are sound, but the method assumes a cold kitchen and a cook who knows what the dough should feel like.
- The hinge: keep everything coldEqual weights of butter and flour only puff if the butter stays in sheets rather than melting into the dough. Work on a cold surface, and chill the paste 20-30 minutes between each of the four turns, longer if the kitchen is warm.
- QuantitiesOne pound of flour is about 3 1/2 cups; one pound of butter is four sticks. Cold water is unspecified but runs to roughly 200-250 ml (a scant cup) for a pound of flour, added a little at a time until the dough just holds.
- "Beaten fifteen minutes"The dough here is the détrempe, and the beating develops gluten so the paste can be rolled repeatedly without tearing. Five to eight minutes of kneading in a mixer with a dough hook does the same work; the dough should be smooth and elastic, then rested before the first turn.
- Half lardThe substitution is a period economy, and lard does make a tender, flaky paste, but it is softer and more plastic than butter at kitchen temperature and works into the dough sooner. If using it, chill more aggressively and expect less lift, since lard carries no water to make steam.
- "Spread on the dough four times and rolled in"This is four turns of laminating: dot or spread a quarter of the fat over two-thirds of the rolled sheet, fold in three, turn ninety degrees, roll out again. Four turns gives a coarse, very flaky paste rather than the fine leaves of a six-turn modern puff.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no temperatures; 'moderate' is conventionally rendered as somewhere around 350F, which is too gentle for laminated paste by current practice. Puff needs a hot start, 400-425F, so the water in the layers flashes to steam before the butter renders out; the temperature can be dropped once the paste has risen and set.
- "Put in tins"Most likely pie, tart or patty pans rather than loaf tins. Roll to about 1/8 inch, line the tins, and chill the shaped paste before it goes in the oven so it holds its shape.
- YieldA pound of flour makes enough paste for two 9-inch double-crust pies, or three or four dozen small patty shells and vol-au-vents.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, belongs to a tradition of Southern receipt books that assumed a great deal of tacit skill: the puff paste entry gives weights and a count of turns and nothing more, because any cook expected to make it had watched it made. The technique is usually traced to French practice, though layered pastes have older and wider antecedents, and English printed receipt books carry recipes under the name "puff paste" from the seventeenth century onward; by the nineteenth century it was the standard casing for the patties, tartlets and covered pies that filled a Virginia sideboard. The permission to use half lard is the most telling line here, a reminder that butter in an inland Southern household was seasonal and finite, while lard was rendered in quantity at hog-killing.