Patty Shells
Roll puff paste one-quarter inch thick, shape with a patty cutter, first dipped in flour; remove centres from one-half the rounds with smaller cutter. Brush over with cold water the larger pieces near the edge, and fit on rings, pressing lightly. Place in towel between pans of crushed ice, and chill until paste is stiff; if cold weather, chill out of doors. Place on iron or tin sheet covered with brown paper, and bake twenty-five minutes in hot oven. The shells should rise their full height and begin to brown in twelve to fifteen minutes; continue browning, and finish baking in twenty-five minutes. Pieces cut from centre of rings of patties may be baked and used for patty covers, or put together, rolled, and cut for unders. Trimmings from puff paste should be carefully laid on top of each other, patted, and rolled out.
This is an assembly-and-baking method rather than a formula; it assumes you have already made the book's puff paste (or have all-butter commercial puff pastry on hand). Most of the fuss is about keeping the paste cold, and that is the part worth honoring.
- Hot oven means 425-450FHot oven -- the book gives no temperatures; "hot oven" is conventionally read today as roughly 425-450F. Puff paste needs high initial heat so the water in the butter layers flashes to steam before the fat melts out. Bake at about 425F for the first 12-15 minutes, until the shells are at full height and just coloring; if they are browning too fast after that, drop to 375F to finish the 25 minutes.
- The ice-and-towel chillThe pans of crushed ice are simply the period equivalent of a refrigerator. Twenty minutes in the freezer on the sheet pan, or an hour in the fridge, gets the paste to the same rigid state. Do not skip it: warm paste slumps sideways instead of rising, and the ring slides off the base.
- Brown paper is parchmentUnbleached butcher paper or grocery-bag paper was the standard nonstick liner. Use parchment. Avoid a dark, heavy sheet pan, which will over-brown the bottoms before the layers have finished lifting.
- Cut straight downPress the floured cutter through in one motion without twisting. A twisted edge seals the laminated layers together and the shell rises lopsided, or not at all.
- Water, not egg, on the jointCold water is the glue between base and ring, and it should go only near the edge. Any egg wash belongs on the top of the ring alone — egg that runs down the cut sides glues the layers shut and stops the rise.
- Trimmings are stacked, never waddedThe instruction to lay scraps flat on top of each other and pat them out is the whole point. Kneading puff paste trimmings destroys the layering; stacked and re-rolled, they still puff enough for lids and bases.
- Sizes and yieldThe recipe specifies no cutter sizes or yield. A 3-inch cutter for the rounds with a 1.5- to 2-inch cutter for the centers is a workable modern choice, giving a shell that holds a couple of tablespoons of filling; a pound of puff paste rolled a quarter-inch thick should yield roughly a dozen shells, plus lids from the cut-out centers.
- Fill at the last momentShells can be baked hours ahead and re-crisped for 5 minutes at 350F. Creamed fillings should go in just before serving, or the interior goes soft.
Patty shells are the American household descendant of the French vol-au-vent and the smaller bouch y work -- puff paste built up in rings so that a case rises around a hollow. Readers of American household cookbooks met them constantly in the 1890s and 1900s, because creamed mixtures were the backbone of genteel entertaining: chicken, sweetbreads, oysters, lobster or mushrooms in white sauce, spooned into a shell and capped with its own lid. The elaborate chilling directions, including the instruction to set the paste outdoors in cold weather, are a reminder that home kitchens of the period predated mechanical refrigeration; ice came by the block. The technique of stacking rather than kneading trimmings was standard professional practice and is still taught the same way.