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Puff Paste Made with Lard
To prepare puff paste with lard use twelve ounces of flour, two ounces of lard, the yolks of two eggs, and about two drachms of salt. Work these into a paste, let it stand for a few minutes, then roll it out, brush over with warm lard, fold the paste in three, roll it out gently again, let it stand for a few minutes, and continue in this way till twelve ounces of lard have been worked into the flour. It is then ready for use in the ordinary way.
A working ratio of equal parts flour and fat, laminated by brushing rather than by the usual butter block. A few things in the wording need translating before it behaves.
- Weights in cupsTwelve ounces of flour is about 2¾ cups (340 g); the fat totals fourteen ounces (2 oz in the dough, 12 oz worked in), so the paste is roughly equal weights flour and lard. Weigh it — volume measurement will not hold this ratio.
- The drachmTwo drachms is either about ½ teaspoon (avoirdupois drams, 3.5 g) or about 1½ teaspoons (apothecaries' drachms, 7.8 g). The text does not say which, and both were current in 1896; for a dough this size, the smaller reading is the sane one.
- The missing liquidTwo egg yolks and 2 oz of lard will not hydrate 340 g of flour. "Work these into a paste" assumes the cook adds ice water, as any détrempe requires — expect somewhere near 5–6 fl oz, added gradually until the dough just coheres.
- Warm lard, not hotThe fat should be soft and spreadable, the consistency of thick paint, not melted and running. Liquid fat soaks into the dough and destroys the layers instead of separating them.
- "Let it stand a few minutes"That was adequate in a cold pantry. In a modern kitchen at 70°F, refrigerate 20–30 minutes between turns, or the lard warms and merges into the flour and you get shortcrust.
- TurnsFolding in three is a single turn. Getting 12 oz of lard in this way takes roughly six turns; do not try to load more than about 2 oz per turn or the paste will tear and leak.
- The lard itselfShelf-stable supermarket lard is usually hydrogenated and slightly waxy. Leaf lard, rendered from the fat around the kidneys, was the grade prized for pastry and gives a cleaner-tasting, higher-rising result; the recipe itself specifies only 'lard'.
- BakingPuff paste needs a hot start to convert its moisture to steam; general practice is a hot oven, around 425–450°F, dropping to about 375°F once the layers have lifted. The recipe gives no oven instruction, only 'use in the ordinary way'.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 book records the Waldorf's kitchen as it actually ran, which means it records economy alongside grandeur. Butter puff paste was the standard for pastry work, but lard was cheaper, firmer in a warm room (its melting point is higher than butter's), and produced a notably flaky, crisp result — lard was a common American pie fat well into the twentieth century, before hydrogenated vegetable shortening displaced it. The brushing method here, spreading soft fat over the rolled sheet rather than enclosing a solid block, is the simpler of the two laminating techniques and is more forgiving of a fat that stays soft at room temperature. What lard does not bring is butter's flavour, which may be why such a paste would suit savoury cases and undercrusts.