Plain Paste
Use same rule as for Chopped Paste. Chop lard into sifted flour; when thoroughly mixed, add salt and water to form dough. Chill; roll in rectangular piece; place butter which has previously been shaped, flattened, and chilled on middle of one side of paste; fold over other side, press edges together, and fold one end under and one end over butter, making six layers. Roll again into rectangle; fold in same way, and so continue three times. If butter begins to soften, roll paste in cheese cloth and place on ice until hard enough to roll easily. Be careful not to wet the cheese cloth. 1 pound butter
This is a rough puff paste — lard rubbed into the flour for tenderness, then a solid block of butter laminated in by folding. The original leans on the preceding "Chopped Paste" entry for its quantities, so some numbers have to be supplied.
- The missing quantitiesOnly the butter (1 pound) is stated here; flour, lard, salt and water come from the cross-referenced Chopped Paste and are genuinely absent from this page. Period puff pastes of this type run roughly equal weights of flour and butter, with about a quarter of that weight in lard, a teaspoon of salt, and ice water added a spoonful at a time — but treat that as a reconstruction, not the book's own figures.
- Cold is the whole recipeThe single instruction that matters is the one about softening butter. If the butter warms enough to blend into the dough rather than sitting in sheets between layers, there is no lamination and the result bakes flat and greasy. Stop at any point, chill, and resume.
- "Place on ice"An icebox or a bowl of ice in 1907. A refrigerator at 38F for 20-30 minutes does the same work; 10 minutes in the freezer if you are impatient, no longer.
- Cheese cloth, and why it must be dryThe book only warns against wetting the cloth and gives no reason; presumably a wet wrapper would leave the paste's surface sticky and soft where it needs to stay dry and firm. Plastic wrap or parchment does the job with no risk of wetting.
- Counting the turnsThe first fold gives six layers, as the book says; "so continue three times" most naturally reads as three further roll-and-fold cycles, four in all, though it can also be read as three in total. Rotate the rectangle a quarter turn each time so you are rolling across the folds, not along them.
- Baking heatNo temperature is given; nothing on this page is baked. Puff paste is generally baked hot — in the region of 425 to 450F — so the trapped water flashes to steam and lifts the layers before the butter melts out. A moderate oven will not raise it.
- YieldOn the reconstructed quantities above, a pound of butter with matching flour would come to roughly two and a half pounds of paste: enough for two 9-inch double-crust pies, or a quantity of small patty shells and vol-au-vents.
- Resting before bakingChill the shaped paste again before it goes into the oven, and cut edges cleanly rather than pressing them, which seals the layers shut and prevents rise.
Lowney's Cook Book (1907) was written by Maria Willett Howard for the Walter M. Lowney Company, a Boston chocolate manufacturer, and belongs to the era of promotional cookbooks issued by food firms — thorough general instruction wrapped around a house ingredient. Its pastry section reflects the American domestic-science tradition that ran through the Boston Cooking School: paste graded by richness, from plain pie crust up through "chopped" and "puff" pastes, each with its own rule. The use of lard in the flour and butter in the layers is characteristic and practical: lard shortens the dough and stays workable, while butter, which sheets well when cold, does the lifting. The insistence on ice at every stage is a reminder that this was written for kitchens with an icebox rather than mechanical refrigeration, where cold was a limited resource to be managed rather than assumed.