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Feuillantines
Prepare some puff paste, roll it out to about a third of an inch thick and cut into one-inch strips and two-inch lengths. Spread a baking-dish thick with butter, arrange the pieces of paste on it, placing them on their sides and leaving a small space between them; put them in the oven, and when they are firm and the sides have spread, glaze them with white of egg and dust with powdered sugar. As the feuillantines are cooked, set them on paper to drain off any extra grease they may contain; they may also be masked separately with a small quantity of different-colored jam. Arrange on a fancy-edged dish-paper or a folded napkin on a dish, and serve.
A simple puff-pastry petit four that depends almost entirely on how the strips are set on the pan. Read the geometry carefully before you start.
- Cut on the sideThe hinge of the recipe: the strips are laid on a cut edge, not flat, so the exposed layers fan outward as the butter steams. Rolling a third of an inch thick and cutting one inch by two inches gives a piece that stands about an inch tall on its side; the recipe asks only for "a small space between them", though allow room for the sides to spread.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Puff paste of this size wants a hot oven, in the region of 400-425F, so the layers lift before the butter melts out. Judge by the recipe's own cue -- firm, with the sides spread -- rather than by the clock.
- The glaze goes on mid-bakeThe egg white and powdered sugar are applied after the pastry has set and opened, then it returns to the oven for a few minutes to lacquer. Glazing at the start weighs down the rise and the sugar scorches.
- Puff pasteOscar assumed a kitchen making its own. All-butter frozen puff pastry is a fair substitute, though it comes rolled thinner than a third of an inch; fold or stack it to build height rather than rolling it out further.
- "Masked"Period kitchen French for coated or covered over. Here it means a thin smear of jam over the finished piece, several colours across the platter for variety. The recipe places the masking at the draining stage and does not specify whether the pieces should be cool.
- Draining"Extra grease" is butter wept from the dough. Paper towel on a rack does the job; leaving them on solid paper alone traps steam and softens the base.
- Yield and servingA pound of puff paste rolled to this thickness yields roughly 30-40 pieces. They are a tea or dessert accompaniment, and they are best eaten the day they are baked.
- Dish-paperA fancy-edged dish-paper is a paper doily. The folded napkin serves the same purpose: it keeps the pastry off a cold plate and absorbs any last butter.
The name is usually traced to the French feuille, leaf, the same root behind mille-feuille and feuilletage, the laminated paste itself — on that account the pastry is named for the visible leaves of dough rather than for any filling, though a rival tradition links the name instead to the Feuillants. Their presence in Oscar Tschirky's book reflects the Waldorf's kitchen brigade being run on French professional lines in the 1890s: the vocabulary (masked, glazed, dish-paper) is straight out of the hotel pastry department, and the assumption that a cook already has puff paste on hand tells you this was written for a house that made it daily.