Quality Paste
2 cups flour 1/4 cup lard. 3/4 cup butter Ice water Put flour in bowl, add lard, and cut it in with knife. When finely chopped add water to make a very stiff dough, using as little as possible. Cut the butter into the dough leaving it in rather coarse pieces. Chill in icebox for several hours or over night. Place ball of paste on floured cloth, pat and roll out. Fold so as to make three layers, turn half way round, pat and roll out. Pat, roll and fold four times, shape and bake at once in hot oven.
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This is a rough puff pastry: lard cut in finely for tenderness, butter left in coarse lumps for lift. The text as printed has lost part of its ingredient list, so a little reconstruction is needed before you start.
- The missing quantitiesOnly the 3/4 cup butter and "ice water" survive in this transcription; the flour and lard amounts have dropped out. Period pastry of this type runs roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups flour and about 1/2 cup lard to that quantity of butter, but the original figures are genuinely absent rather than merely obscure.
- Hot ovenThe text gives no figure; a 'hot oven' of this period is generally taken as roughly 425-450F. Pastry needs that initial blast so the water in the butter turns to steam and forces the layers apart before the fat has a chance to melt out.
- Bake at onceThe instruction to shape and bake immediately after the last turn is the hinge of the method. A rolled and shaped rough puff left sitting at room temperature loses its distinct fat layers and bakes flat and greasy.
- LardModern supermarket lard is often hydrogenated and shelf-stable, which handles differently from the freshly rendered lard of the period. Rendered leaf lard from a butcher is closer; all-vegetable shortening works but gives less flavour.
- Coarse pieces of butterResist the impulse to cut the butter in evenly. Lumps roughly the size of a large olive are what make the flaking; they smear into sheets during rolling rather than dispersing into the dough.
- ChillingSeveral hours is not padding. The dough needs the butter firm enough to laminate and the gluten relaxed enough to roll without springing back. Overnight in the refrigerator is better than the minimum.
- The floured clothA pastry cloth was standard equipment and still works well, taking up less loose flour than a bare counter. Any lightly floured surface will do, but keep added flour to a minimum or the paste toughens.
- TurnsFour fold-and-rolls with a half turn ('turn half way round') between each is the whole lamination. Counting them matters; fewer gives uneven layers, many more begins to merge them.
- YieldAt the quantities suggested above this makes enough for a double-crust nine-inch pie, or two single crusts, or a good batch of tart shells and patty cases.
This kind of book distinguishes several grades of pastry, and "quality paste" sits between everyday plain paste and a full puff paste made with more turns. The two-fat approach is characteristic of American home baking around 1900: lard was cheap, plentiful and produced a notably tender crumb, while butter supplied both flavour and, because of its water content, the steam that separates the layers. Butter alone was expensive enough that a household using it throughout was making a statement. The technique of chopping fat in with a knife predates the wire pastry blender in common kitchen use, and the instruction to work on a floured cloth reflects a period when kitchen counters were as likely to be scrubbed wood as anything easily cleaned.