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Paste for Oyster Patties
Put twelve ounces of well-sifted flour in a basin, and mix in with it the strained juice of a lemon, and a sufficient quantity of water to form a light dough. Dredge a marble slab with flour, put the dough on it and knead it well, then roll it out, spread twelve ounces of butter over, fold it again, and roll out four times, then fold it in three and stand it in a cool place. In about two hours' time roll the paste out to about one-third inch in thickness, and cut out several large rounds, and the same number of small ones, using two different sized paste cutters, which should be dipped in flour each time to prevent their sticking. Lay the rounds on a baking-tin and bake them till lightly browned. When cooked scoop a little of the paste out of the center of each round, fill the hollow with whatever may have been prepared for it, and cover with the smaller rounds.
This is a straightforward puff paste (feuilletage) at the classic equal-weights ratio, written for a cook who already knows what a turn is. The original omits oven temperature and water quantity, so those need supplying.
- The hinge: keep everything coldButter and dough must stay at the same firm, pliable temperature throughout. If the butter softens and merges into the dough, you get shortcrust rather than layers; chill 20 minutes between turns whenever the paste starts to feel greasy or resists rolling.
- Weights, not cupsTwelve ounces of flour is about 3 cups sifted, and twelve ounces of butter is three sticks. This is a full-butter puff at 1:1 he ratio is the whole point, so weigh it if you can.
- The unstated water"A sufficient quantity" is roughly 5 to 6 fluid ounces of ice water for this much flour, added gradually. The dough should be soft enough to knead smoothly but not tacky.
- Why the lemon juiceThe acid is traditionally said to relax the gluten so the paste rolls out without fighting back and shrinking. One lemon gives roughly 2 tablespoons; it does not flavor the finished shells.
- "Roll out four times"This means four turns each roll-and-fold counts as one followed by a final fold in three. Always roll away from you and keep the folded edges square.
- Oven heatNone is given. Puff paste needs a hot oven, around 425F, so the trapped water flashes to steam and lifts the layers before the butter can leak out. Reckon on 15 to 20 minutes for shells this size, to the 'lightly browned' the recipe asks for.
- The marble slabMarble is used because it stays cold. A chilled sheet pan turned upside down, or simply a countertop wiped with ice water and dried, does the same work.
- Yield and assemblyTwelve ounces of flour gives roughly 12 to 16 patty shells at a 3-inch cutter. Press cutters straight down without twisting, or the edges seal and the shells rise lopsided. The small rounds are the lids; scoop and fill while the shells are still warm.
- The filling, if you are making oyster pattiesOysters for a patty want two to three minutes in their own liquor bound with a cream sauce — long simmering turns them tough and shrunken. Fill at the last moment so the pastry stays crisp.
Oscar Tschirky came to the Waldorf in 1893 as its maître d'hôtel and stayed on through the merger with the Astoria, and his 1896 Cook Book reads less like a home manual than like a working reference for the hotel's own kitchens — hence a recipe for the shell filed separately from whatever goes inside it. Oyster patties were standard American party food in the 1890s, when oysters were cheap and everywhere, and the format is a scaled-down vol-au-vent: a round of puff paste hollowed out and capped, a technique generally traced to French pastry practice of the early nineteenth century and often credited to Carême's kitchen. The near-total absence of instruction about oven heat here is typical of the period; a professional cook judged the fire by hand and eye, and the book assumes its reader can do the same.