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Paste for Pies
Put three pounds of well-sifted flour on a board or table, work in one pound of butter, make a hollow in the center, and work in the yolks of four eggs, one ounce of salt, and a breakfast cupful of cold water. Should the paste while being used be too hard and crack, it may be rolled out again and slightly dampened with water before being worked up. If preferred, the butter may be mixed in with the liquids, before being introduced into the flour, which must be well worked in, adding it gradually. It is far easier to make this paste in winter than in summer.
Paste for Meat and Game Pies Use eight ounces of butter to one pound of flour; chop one-half the butter into the flour, and add one teaspoonful of salt and enough cold water, to mix it to a smooth paste just soft enough to roll out. If ice-water is used, the paste is mixed with a knife instead of the hand, as it can be kept cooler, and will be lighter and more delicate. In making, touch the paste as little and as lightly as possible with the hands, because heating and pressing heavily upon it makes it dense and tough. After the paste is mixed and rolled about one-half inch thick, dredge it with flour, cut half the remaining butter into slices, and lay them on the paste, leaving a space of about one inch all around the edges, dredge the butter with flour, turn the edges in all round to enclose the outside layers of butter, and then double the paste, and roll it out about one-half inch thick, put the rest of the butter on it in slice, dredge again with flour, fold in the edges, double it, and roll out as already directed. If any paste is left after the pie is made, wrap it in a floured cloth and keep in a cool dry place; it will be good for several days, and only requires to be rolled out two or three times before using to make it quite light.
Two pastries in one entry: a lean egg-yolk paste scaled for a hotel kitchen, and a rough puff for meat and game pies. Both assume a cold room and a marble slab, which is the part most home kitchens have to work around.
- Scale it downThree pounds of flour is roughly 11 cups and will make about four double-crust pies. Divide the first recipe by four for two crusts: 12 oz flour, 4 oz butter, 1 egg yolk, about 1 1/4 teaspoons fine salt, about 1/4 cup water.
- A breakfast cupfulLarger than a teacup and generally reckoned at 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Treat it as a starting point rather than a measurement -- flour absorbency varies, and the dough should just come together.
- The saltOne ounce of salt to three pounds of flour is about 1.5 tablespoons of fine salt, which reads high but works out near 2 percent of the flour weight. If you use coarse kosher salt, measure by weight, not spoonfuls.
- A lean pasteOne pound of butter to three pounds of flour is less fat than most modern pie doughs carry. Expect a firm, sturdy crust built to hold filling and be lifted in slices, not a flaky dessert shell.
- Why winter is easierCooling at the bench was limited in the kitchens Oscar wrote for. Butter that softens and blends into the flour gives a greasy, less flaky paste, and warm dough invites overworking. Chill the butter, the water and the bowl, and rest the dough in the refrigerator 30 minutes before rolling.
- The hinge: handle it cold and littleFor the meat and game paste, the folding and rolling is a rough puff. If the butter smears rather than staying in sheets, the layers vanish. Chill 20 to 30 minutes between each fold whenever the dough softens, and roll on a lightly floured surface with firm, short strokes.
- Half-inch is thick on purposeRolling the rough puff to half an inch between turns keeps the butter layers intact. The final crust should be rolled thinner, about 1/8 to 1/4 inch depending on whether it is a lid or a raised pie wall.
- Keeping the trimmings"A cool dry place" meant a larder. Wrap scraps tightly and refrigerate no more than two or three days, or freeze for up to three months. Stack rather than ball up any laminated trimmings, or you lose the layers.
- No oven givenNeither paste is baked here. Modern practice for a filled double-crust pie is usually to start hot, around 425F for 15 minutes to set the pastry, then drop to 350F to cook through; blind-baked shells are commonly done around 400F.
Oscar Tschirky ran the dining rooms of the Waldorf, and his 1896 cook book reads throughout like a professional kitchen's notebook set loose in a domestic one -- hence flour by the three pounds and salt by the ounce, quantities that make sense to a pastry cook turning out pies for a hotel by the dozen. The distinction he draws between an all-purpose paste and a separate, richer, laminated paste for meat and game pies belongs to the older English and French tradition where a savoury pie was a substantial construction expected to hold its shape and be carved, not merely a filled dish. His warning that the work is easier in winter is a real one from a time when mechanical refrigeration had not necessarily reached the bench, and the instruction to mix with a knife rather than the hand is the same idea applied to the cook's own body heat.