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To Glaze Puff Paste
When a brown, polished finish is desired, the pastry should be brushed with egg glaze before baking. For this glaze allow one tablespoon of water to each egg. The egg must not be beaten to a frothy stage but merely enough to make it mix with the water. Where gloss but no color is desired, the white of the egg alone may be used. The yolk gives the yellowish brown tinge which is so much admired on French pastry. Use a quill for this work and dust over with sugar. A
A working formula for egg wash, still exactly right. The only things that have changed are the brush and the oven.
- The hinge: keep it off the cut edgesOn puff paste, glaze that runs down the sides glues the layers together and the pastry rises crooked or not at all. Brush the top surface only, and stop short of the edge.
- Do not beat to a frothThe instruction is precise. Bubbles dry as pale streaks and blisters on the baked surface. Stir with a fork just until the yolk and white are broken and the water is incorporated, then let it stand a minute for any foam to settle.
- A quill means a brushFeathers were commonly used in kitchens of the period for glazing and basting. Use a soft silicone or natural-bristle pastry brush, loaded lightly and wiped against the rim of the cup.
- Choosing the eggWhole egg with water gives shine plus moderate colour; yolk alone (thinned with a little water or cream) gives the deep French gold; white alone gives gloss with almost no browning, which is what you want under a heavy dusting of sugar.
- QuantitiesThe recipe gives only the ratio, one tablespoon of water to each egg; a single egg's worth of glaze goes a long way. Strain it through a sieve if you want a flawless surface, as the stringy chalazae will otherwise drag.
- Sugar and heatThe recipe gives no oven temperature. Puff paste is baked hot, and egg glaze plus sugar colours fast, so check before the end and tent with foil if the top darkens before the layers have set.
- Two coatsFor a lacquered finish, glaze once, let it dry for a few minutes in the refrigerator, then glaze again. A single heavy coat pools and streaks.
Egg wash is the oldest of pastry cosmetics -- French kitchens call it dorure, gilding, and the word carries the intent: to make baked flour look like burnished metal. The Butterick book, published for American housekeepers in the early twentieth century, is quietly signalling ambition here, since a "brown, polished finish" and the mention of French pastry both point to the professional patisserie standards that domestic cooks were being encouraged to imitate. The quill is the period detail worth noticing: feathers were used in kitchens for applying anything thin and sticky, cheap enough to discard and soft enough not to drag the paste. Bristle pastry brushes were sold commercially by this date, but a quill cost nothing.