Crust, Flead
INGREDIENTS.-To every lb. of flour allow 1/2 lb. of flead, 1/2 pint of water, 1/21 saltspoonful of salt. AVERAGE COST, 5d. per lb.
Clear the flead from skin, and slice it into thin flakes; rub it into the flour, add the salt, and work the whole into a smooth paste, with the above proportion of water; fold the paste over two or three times, beat it well with the rolling-pin, roll it out, and it will be ready for use. The crust made from this will be found extremely light, and may be made into cakes or tarts; it may also be very much enriched by adding more flead to the same proportion of flour.
Crust, Suet (for Pies or Puddings).
INGREDIENTS.-To every lb. of flour allow 5 or 6 oz. of beef suet, 1/2 pint of water.
AVERAGE COST, 4d. per lb.
Free the suet from skin and shreds, chop it extremely fine, and rub it well into the flour; work the whole to a smooth paste with the above proportion of water; roll it out, and it is ready for use. This crust is quite rich enough for ordinary purposes, but when a better one is desired, use from tolb. of suet to ever every lb. of flour. Some cooks, for rich crusts, pound the suet in a mortar, with a small quantity of butter.
It should then be laid on the paste in small pre pieces, the same as for puff-crust, and will be found exceedingly nice for hot tarts. 5 oz. of suet to every lb. of flour will make a very good crust; and even 1/4 lb. will answer very well for children, or where the crust is wanted very plain.
Two related pastries: one built on flead (the soft leaf fat of the pig, still in its membrane) and one on beef suet. Both are rubbed-in doughs rather than laminated ones, and both depend on the fat staying cold and in visible flakes.
- What flead isFlead is the sheet of soft leaf fat that lies around a pig's kidneys, sold in its membrane rather than rendered. Ask a butcher for leaf lard or leaf fat in the block; rendered lard from a tub behaves differently and gives a shorter, less flaky crust.
- Fat proportions in these crustsThe flead crust calls for 1/2 lb. of flead to every lb. of flour, which is what the printed page gives. The suet version's 5 to 6 oz. per pound of flour is a good guide to how rich such a pastry runs.
- SaltA saltspoon is about a quarter teaspoon. The amount given for the flead crust is garbled; a quarter to half a teaspoon per pound of flour is the sensible range, and the suet crust as printed carries no salt at all, which it should have.
- Keep everything coldFlead and suet must be firm when they go into the flour, or they smear rather than flake. Chill the fat hard, and slice or chop it rather than working it warm with your hands.
- WaterHalf a pint here is the imperial half pint, 10 fl oz or about 1 1/4 US cups per pound of flour. That is a wetter dough than modern shortcrust; add it in stages, since flour absorbency varies.
- Beating with the rolling pinThe instruction to fold and beat is deliberate. It distributes the fat in layers without the sustained kneading that would build gluten, and it is the step that makes this crust light rather than tough.
- Suet, then and nowBeeton means raw beef kidney fat, chopped fine. Packaged shredded suet is coated in flour and works, though vegetable suet gives a softer, less savoury result. If you buy fresh suet, strip the membrane and shreds out before chopping.
- Cooking the suet crustSuet pastry is meant for boiled or steamed puddings and pie lids, not for cold work. It needs long moist heat, typically an hour and a half to three hours steaming for a filled pudding, to melt the fat through the dough.
- YieldA pound of flour makes enough for two 8-9 inch pie lids, or one large steamed pudding with a lid.
Before commercial shortening, English kitchens sorted their pastry by which animal fat was to hand: butter for the richest, flead or lard for pies and cakes, suet for anything to be boiled in a cloth. Flead was the pig's leaf fat bought whole from the butcher, and flead cakes remained a Kentish and Sussex specialty long after the fat itself had largely been rendered down into lard for convenience. Suet crust was the workhorse of the Victorian household, cheap, filling and endlessly adaptable to whatever went inside it, and Beeton gives several different degrees of richness, noting plainly that the leanest version will do for children or where the crust is meant to be plain. The average costs given are fourpence and fivepence a pound.