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To Prepare Suet for Making Puff-Paste
Cut the suet very small, leaving out all dark meat stained pieces, and set on the side of the range in a boiler with plenty of hot water. The suet must not boil but steep in scalding water for a few hours. Then pour water and all into a large strainer with a bottom of perforated tin--a gravy strainer--and rub the fat through with a potato masher. Get a pan of broken ice and water and a little salt in it, and dip the strained fat by ladlefuls into it, stirring the ice about at the same time. The fat sets instantly on falling into the cold water in crumbs like meal. Gather it by straining. press it together and pound it with a masher in a bowl as you would butter. Salt it for use. Some years ago--about the close of the war--the writer had a friendly contention with a fine cook who made splendid pastry, as to whether as fine puff paste could not be made by the old-fashioned way just explained, as by this following. It was finally decided, after both ways had been tested to the utmost, that there was no difference in the results, but there are certain every-day work considerations in favor of the old way. The leaf paste is fine for fancy tarts. The workman who would be perfect in his trade will practice both. It's bad to have a fellow come along and beat you.
This is a preparation rather than a finished dish: wet-rendering raw beef suet into a clean, neutral, workable fat for puff paste. Everything depends on keeping the water below a simmer.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe recipe keeps the pot at the side of the range so the water stays below a simmer; the fat is softened and loosened from the membrane without browning, which is what keeps it pale and mild. Let the water come to a boil and the fat is likelier to darken and take on a tallowy taste that later working will not much improve.
- Suet, specificallySuet is the hard crumbly fat from around beef kidneys and loin, not general trimmings. Ask a butcher; softer caul or trim fat renders greasier and will not hold the layers in a puff paste. Shredded packaged suet sold for puddings is cut with flour, so it will not behave the same way.
- "A boiler"Here it means simply a deep pot of hot water, not a double boiler and not a laundry boiler. Any wide saucepan works; a wider pan gives the fat more surface to rise to.
- The strainerA perforated-tin gravy strainer is a coarse colander. A metal colander over a bowl, with the softened fat pushed through with a masher or the back of a ladle, does the job; the perforations should be large enough that fat passes and membrane stays behind.
- Why the ice waterLadling the hot fat into salted ice water chills it so fast that it sets in fine granules instead of one greasy slab, and the water carries off remaining meat juices and blood. Keep stirring or the crumbs weld together.
- Working and saltingThe pounding in a bowl is the same motion as working butter: it drives out trapped water, which encourages the fat to sour and spoil. Work until no cloudy liquid weeps out, then salt lightly.
- Yield and keepingWell worked and salted the fat keeps a few weeks refrigerated and months frozen; any beefy smell means it has turned.
- "Leaf paste"The author compares this older method with another that follows on the next page, which is not reproduced here. He concedes the two puff pastes are indistinguishable in result, notes everyday work considerations in favour of the old way, and says the leaf paste is fine for fancy tarts.
Rendering suet in water is described in the recipe as the "old-fashioned way," contrasted with a method that follows it. The whole point of the wet method is to strip the beef out of beef fat, producing something bland and plastic enough to laminate. The aside about "about the close of the war" places the author's contest in the years just after 1865 and gives a glimpse of how the trade actually settled arguments: two cooks, both ways tested to the utmost. His closing remark that a workman should learn both methods because "it's bad to have a fellow come along and beat you" is the voice of the professional kitchen of the period, where technique was capital.