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Paste Made with Cream
Mix one-half teaspoonful each of salt and bicarbonate of soda with one breakfast cupful of cream; stir in gradually enough flour to make a stiff paste. Sprinkle a little flour on the table, and roll the paste out on it to about one-half inch thick. Cut about two ounces of butter in small pieces and put these on the paste; sift over a little flour, double the paste and roll it out thin. It is then ready to be used.
A quick rough-puff pastry built on cream rather than the usual rubbed-in fat. It comes together in minutes, but two things in the original need translating: the size of the cup and the reason the soda is there.
- "Paste" means doughIn this period paste is any pastry dough, not a spreadable paste. This one is a pie and pudding crust, suited to meat pies, cobbler tops and turnovers.
- A breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is larger than a modern measuring cup, generally 8 to 10 fluid ounces. Start with 8 oz (1 cup) of cream and hold back the rest; flour absorbency varies too much to fix the ratio.
- Flour quantity is left to judgmentExpect roughly 2 to 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour per cup of cream. Add it in stages and stop as soon as the dough is stiff enough to roll without sticking; the dough toughens fast once it is worked.
- The soda wants an acidBicarbonate of soda on its own has nothing to react with in sweet cream, and half a teaspoon can leave a soapy, faintly metallic taste. The recipe may assume cream carrying some natural acidity, though it does not say so. Cultured cream, creme fraiche or a soured cream will give lift; with fresh pasteurized cream, baking powder is the closer equivalent.
- Cream, not half-and-halfHeavy cream at 36 percent or more carries enough fat to shorten the dough. Light cream or half-and-half produces something closer to a biscuit than a pastry.
- The fold is the whole pointDotting butter over the rolled sheet, dusting with flour, folding and rolling thin is a single-turn rough puff. Keep the butter cold and firm so it stays in sheets rather than smearing, and chill the dough 20 minutes before the final roll if the kitchen is warm.
- BakingNo oven is given. A pastry like this wants a hot oven, 400 to 425F, so the layers set before the butter runs out.
- YieldRoughly 1 1/4 pounds of dough by the quantities above, enough for a generous single 9-inch crust or the lid of a deep pie dish, with trimmings.
Cream pastes belong to a family of quick crusts leavened with saleratus or bicarbonate of soda, relying on whatever acidity the dairy happened to carry. Cream kept without refrigeration could carry a tang that pasteurized supermarket cream no longer has. The rolling-in of butter after the dough is mixed is a shortcut version of the laminating used in true puff paste, sometimes called rough puff or half-puff, and it gives much of the flake for a fraction of the labor. Oscar Tschirky, the Waldorf's celebrated maitre d'hotel, published his cookbook in 1896, and short utility recipes like this one sit alongside the elaborate dishes the dining room was known for.