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Puff Paste
One-half pound of butter; one-half teaspoon of sugar; one-half cup of ice water; one-half pound of lard; one teaspoon of salt; one-half white of an egg. The usual proportions are a pound of flour to a pound of butter, but this makes a large quantity and the above will be found nearer the amount ordinarily required. Half fill a bowl with ice water and in it place the butter. Wash
A classic French-style puff paste, scaled down from the old pound-for-pound rule. Note that the printed text breaks off mid-instruction, and that flour is discussed but never given a quantity in the ingredient list.
- The missing flourThe ingredient list omits flour entirely, though the note explains the usual proportion is a pound of flour to a pound of butter. The fat here totals a pound (half butter, half lard), so a pound of flour, roughly 3 1/2 cups, is a plausible reading; but the rule as printed is flour to butter, and the text breaks off, so the intended figure is guesswork.
- Washing the butterThe truncated instruction is the standard nineteenth-century step: work the butter in a bowl of ice water with the hands to squeeze out buttermilk and excess salt, then press it into a firm cake and chill. Dairy butter of the period varied wildly in water and salt content; modern unsalted butter needs no washing, only to be cold and pliable.
- Weights and volumesHalf a pound of butter is two sticks or one cup. Half a pound of lard is roughly one cup. Half a cup of ice water would be lean hydration if a pound of flour is intended, though the recipe never states the flour, so the paste may well look dry before the folds bring it together.
- The lardSplitting the fat between butter and lard was ordinary economy and tends to give a shorter paste. The recipe specifies only 'lard', so the grade is unstated; leaf lard is the closest modern equivalent to what a period cook would have had.
- Egg white and sugarThe half white of egg presumably adds a little firmness; the half teaspoon of sugar is too small a quantity to do much beyond a trace of browning. Neither makes the paste sweet, so it serves for meat pies and vol-au-vents as well as sweet work.
- Temperature is the hingeEverything depends on the butter staying in sheets rather than blending into the flour. Work on a cool surface, and if the fat begins to soften or show through, stop and refrigerate the paste for 20 to 30 minutes before the next turn.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no baking instruction at all (the text breaks off before any). By modern practice puff paste wants a hot oven for the first stretch so the water in the butter flashes to steam and lifts the layers, then a lower heat to dry the interior; a moderate oven throughout melts the fat out and gives a flat, greasy crust.
- YieldImpossible to state exactly, since the flour is missing; if a pound of flour is assumed, something over two pounds of paste, enough for a couple of dozen small patty cases. It freezes well, wrapped.
Puff paste of this kind is often said to have reached American cookbooks by way of French professional pastry, where a pound-for-pound ratio of flour to butter is traditionally described as the shop standard; the book's frank admission that this "makes a large quantity" is a good marker of how these recipes were adapted for a household cook. The instruction to wash the butter, now obsolete, appears in American recipes of this period because butter was usually salted for keeping and often carried a good deal of residual buttermilk, which soured quickly and made a paste taste off. The pastry chapter reflects its audience: ambitious enough to attempt laminated dough, practical enough to want it halved.