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Puff Paste Made with Oil
Puff paste prepared with sweet-oil is made in the same way as puff paste made with lard, using the same quantity of oil as lard and working it in the same manner.
A one-line variation rather than a standalone recipe: Oscar assumes you already have his lard puff paste in front of you and simply swaps the fat. That swap has consequences he does not mention.
- What "sweet-oil" meansIn American kitchens of this period sweet oil generally meant olive oil, sold by druggists as well as by grocers. Any neutral or light olive oil answers; a peppery modern extra-virgin will taste assertive in a plain paste.
- The hinge: oil will not laminateClassic puff paste works because a solid, plastic fat stays in continuous sheets between layers of dough and turns to steam in the oven. Liquid oil cannot hold a sheet, so it disperses into the flour instead. Expect a tender, short, flaky paste closer to a hot-water or oil pastry, not a risen puff of many leaves.
- Handle cold and quicklySince the fat cannot be kept firm, chill everything else: ice water, chilled flour, a cold surface. Resting the dough covered between turns lets the gluten relax and helps keep the oil from weeping out at the edges.
- Where it earns its placeBest used for savory tart shells, patty bottoms, pie coverings and anything where flakiness rather than height is the point. For vol-au-vents and true feuilletage, use a butter paste.
Oscar Tschirky, the maitre d'hotel whose name carried the Waldorf's kitchen into print in 1896, wrote for a house that cooked for a very mixed clientele, and the lard puff paste in this section reads as a working record of that. Lard was the ordinary American shortening of the 1890s and butter the luxury one; olive oil, then often sold as "sweet oil," was the fat you reached for when animal fat was unwanted, whether for religious observance, for Lenten and fast-day cooking, or for a dish meant to be eaten cold without the waxy set that lard gives. That last reason is often cited and fits the hotel's habits, though Oscar himself offers no explanation. The brevity of the entry is characteristic of the book: it was compiled for cooks who already knew the master method and needed only to be told what to change.