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Crust, Common Short
INGREDIENTS. - To every lb. of flour allow 2 oz. of sifted sugar, 3 oz. of butter, about 1/2 pint of boiling milk. AVERAGE COST, 5d. per lb.
Crumble the butter into the flour as finely as possible, add the sugar, and work the whole up to a smooth paste with the boiling milk. Roll it out thin, and bake in a moderate oven.
A plain sweetened paste for tarts and biscuit-like cases, made by the hot-liquid method rather than the cold-butter method most modern bakers learn. A few of the quantities need judgement.
- The milk is the thing to watchHalf an imperial pint is 10 fl oz (about 1 1/4 US cups), a generous amount of liquid for 1 lb (about 3 1/2 cups) of flour. The recipe says 'about', so add it in stages and stop as soon as the dough comes together smoothly; you may well need appreciably less than the full amount.
- Boiling milk, not coldPouring the milk boiling scalds some of the flour's starch and partly melts the butter, giving a paste that rolls without cracking and bakes short and crisp rather than flaky. It also means the dough must be worked and rolled while warm, since it stiffens as it cools.
- Moderate ovenUsually reckoned at about 350F / 180C (some sources put a moderate oven a little higher). Thin sheets of this paste colour quickly, so check at 12-15 minutes.
- "Sifted sugar"Not icing sugar in the modern sense but ordinary sugar passed through a sieve to break lumps. Caster sugar is the closest equivalent and dissolves best in the hot milk.
- Rubbing in"Crumble the butter into the flour as finely as possible" means rub to fine breadcrumbs with no visible flakes; unlike puff or flaky pastry, no lamination is wanted here.
- The cost line5d. per lb is five pre-decimal pence, from the era of 240 pence to the pound. It is a period price marker, not a modern guide.
- Yield and useOne pound of flour makes enough paste to line two 9-inch tart tins with trimmings over. It suits jam tarts, fruit tarts and cut biscuits; it is too sweet and too tender for a raised meat pie.
Mrs Beeton's book carries a whole rank of pastes graded by richness and cost, from puff paste with butter weight-for-weight against flour down to the plainest suet crust, and this "common short crust" sits near the frugal end: three ounces of butter to the pound of flour, where a good short crust of the period might take six or eight. The boiling-liquid technique it uses is the same principle behind hot water crust, long standard in English pie-making, though here the fat is butter and the liquid milk rather than lard and water. Sweetened short pastes of this kind belonged to the everyday tart and turnover rather than the dinner-party dish, and the price per pound printed at the head of the entry is characteristic of the book, which was written for households keeping accounts as closely as they kept recipes.