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Raspberry Turnovers
Cut circles of puff paste three inches in diameter, having the paste not more than one-eighth of an inch in thickness. Moisten the edge of the circle for about a halfinch with cold water, and, in the center, lay a teaspoon of thick raspberry preserve. Fold one-half the circle over the other, making edges meet. Press closely with a three-tined fork dipped in flour to insure doubled edges adhering. Brush with beaten egg, prick and chill before placing in the oven. Dust with granulated sugar before serving. If special ornamentation is desired, decorate the top of each with a single preserved berry or a candied cherry. NAPOLEONS-Divide paste into thirds and roll each portion into a sheet as thin as possible without breaking. Prick and chill before baking. When baked a delicate brown, cool, and spread between the sheets any flavored cream filling preferred and spread top with confectioners' frosting. When ready to serve cut in blocks, two inches wide by four inches long.
The original assumes you already know how to bake puff paste, so the two things it leaves out are the oven temperature and the baking time. Both matter more here than anything else on the page.
- Oven heatThe recipe gives no temperature. Puff paste generally wants a hot oven, in the region of 425-450F, so that the water in the butter layers flashes to steam and lifts the dough; too cool an oven lets the butter melt out and gives a flat, greasy result. Reckon on roughly 15-20 minutes for the turnovers and 12-15 for the Napoleon sheets, but the book gives no times and its only cue is "a delicate brown."
- The chilling step is not optional"Prick and chill before placing in the oven" is the hinge of the recipe. Thirty minutes in the refrigerator firms the butter so the layers separate rather than merge, and it also relaxes the paste so the turnovers do not shrink into ovals.
- SealingA half-inch of cold water on the rim plus the fork crimp is what keeps the jam inside. Chill the sealed turnovers seam-side up and vent each one with two small slits; unvented pastries burst at the crimp.
- Thick preserve, not jam or fresh fruit"Thick raspberry preserve" means a stiff, low-moisture conserve. A loose modern jam or thawed frozen fruit will boil out through the seam. A teaspoon per three-inch circle is genuinely all that fits.
- Puff pasteThe recipe assumes you can already make it, presumably from directions given elsewhere in the book. Commercial all-butter puff pastry, rolled to the specified one-eighth inch, behaves much the same way; the frozen shortening-based kind rises less and tastes flatter.
- YieldThe recipe does not say how much paste to use. Working from a pound rolled to an eighth of an inch, you would get somewhere in the region of 18-24 three-inch circles, and so that many turnovers. Bake with an inch between them; they expand sideways as well as up.
- The NapoleonsThe three thin sheets are to be pricked all over, as the recipe says; baking them under a light weight also helps keep them level, though the recipe does not call for it. "Any flavored cream filling preferred" leaves the choice open. Assemble no more than a few hours ahead, since the sheets soften quickly once filled, and cut with a serrated knife in a sawing motion.
Turnovers of this sort are simply the domestic end of a professional French pastry repertoire that American cookbooks absorbed, which is why Napoleons sit in the same paragraph without explanation. The name is sometimes traced not to the emperor but to napolitain, a pastry associated with Naples, though the derivation is disputed and the connection to Bonaparte is still argued for. The cook book carries throughout the same assumption: that a competent woman working at home could execute professional work if given exact dimensions. Hence the three-inch circles, the eighth-inch thickness, and the two-by-four-inch blocks, all specified with a tailor's precision while the oven temperature is left to judgment, since coal and wood ranges had no dial to quote.