Home › The Waldorf Kitchen › Crisp Paste
Crisp Paste
Sift four ounces of flour and two ounces of powdered white sugar; mix together and work them into a paste with the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. Use a wooden spoon to mix the paste, touching it as little as possible with the hands. This paste may be used in making fruit tarts; it should be baked in a hot oven and immediately before putting it into the oven should be brushed over with well-beaten white of egg and sprinkled with powered white sugar.
A lean sweet pastry in the French manner — flour, sugar and yolks, with no butter at all. It behaves quite differently from a modern short crust, and the handling instruction is the whole point of the recipe.
- WeightsFour ounces of flour is about 115 g, or roughly three-quarters of a cup plus two tablespoons scooped lightly. Two ounces of sugar is about 55 g, a generous quarter cup.
- "Powdered white sugar"In 1896 this meant granulated sugar ground fine — what we now sell as caster or superfine sugar. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch and will make the paste chalkier; caster is the closer match, both in the dough and in the sprinkling.
- The hinge: keep your hands off itThere is no butter here and the yolks supply only a little fat, so working the paste is the main thing that can toughen it. Mix with the wooden spoon until it just coheres, press it together, and roll it once.
- Hydration is tightTwo yolks against 115 g of flour is a very dry mix, and yolk size varies. Expect a stiff, crumbly rubble; a teaspoon of cold water or an extra yolk may be needed to bring it together, and the original gives no guidance on this.
- "A hot oven""A hot oven" -- Period 'hot oven' is usually read as somewhere in the 400-450F range. The high heat crisps a lean paste quickly, but the sugar in the dough and on top will colour fast -- check at 10 minutes; a thin shell will likely be done well inside 20.
- The egg-white glazeBrushed on and sugared just before baking, the white sets into a thin glazed crust, which is often said to help keep fruit juice from soaking the base. Apply it sparingly; a puddle of white will scorch.
- Roll it thinThe name and the lean mix both suggest a crisp rather than sturdy shell; around 3 mm is a reasonable thickness, and it will not stretch or patch -- re-roll trimmings rather than pressing seams.
- YieldEnough for one 8-inch tart shell or six to eight small tartlets.
History: Oscar Tschirky's book, published in 1896, is associated with the kitchen of a great New York hotel at the end of the nineteenth century, and that kitchen was French in its pastry as in most other things. A flour-sugar-yolk paste of this kind belongs to the family of sweet lining doughs the French call pâte sucrée or pâte sèche, and the instruction to mix with a spoon and avoid the hands is a familiar piece of nineteenth-century pastry discipline.