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Short Paste for Savory Pies
Sift one pound of dried flour onto the slab or table, collect it altogether in a heap, make a hole in the center. In this hollow, put a teaspoonful of salt and the yolks of two or three eggs. Put in a small stewpan one teacupful of water and four ounces of fresh butter; set this over the fire till the butter is melted, then pour it, little by little, into the hollow in the flour, and work the flour in with two fingers until it is all taken up and worked into a stiff paste; work this on the slab with both hands till it is well kneaded, then roll it into a ball, wrap it up in a floured cloth, and let it stand for two or three hours in a cool place; by this time the dough will have set and be ready for use. The rolling out should be done lightly; any heavy handling spoils the crust.
This is a hot-water pastry enriched with butter and egg yolks — sturdier than a flaky short crust and meant to hold up under a wet savory filling. A few of Oscar's terms need translating before you start.
- "Dried flour"Period cookbooks often direct that flour be dried before use, since flour kept in barrels and bins picked up damp. Modern bagged flour needs no drying; sift it and move on.
- One pound of flourAbout 3 1/2 to 4 cups of all-purpose flour, depending how it is measured. Weigh it if you can — the water and butter are fixed, so a heavy-handed cup measure will give you a dry, cracking paste.
- A teacupful of waterGenuinely imprecise. Period teacups ran roughly 5 to 6 fluid ounces, so read it as about 2/3 to 3/4 cup, and hold a little back to add as needed once you see how the flour takes it.
- Four ounces of fresh butterOne stick. "Fresh" means unsalted, as against the heavily salted keeping butter of the period; since the recipe already salts the flour, use unsalted.
- The hinge: keep the liquid hotThe hinge: keep the liquid warm -- The recipe heats the water and butter only until the butter melts, but it should go into the well warm and be worked in quickly; warm liquid is what makes this sort of paste pliable and strong rather than short. Let it cool in the well and the dough is likely to come out stiff and crumbly.
- The two- to three-hour restA cool place, not the back of the refrigerator. The dough needs to firm and hydrate but must stay workable; if it goes rock-hard, let it sit at room temperature until it will roll without cracking.
- Rolling lightlyOscar's last line is the real instruction. This paste toughens with rerolling and heavy pressure — roll in one direction, turn, and roll again, and lift rather than push.
- Yield and bakingRoughly enough for a double-crust 9- or 10-inch savory pie, or the case and lid of one raised pie. No oven temperature is given; a modern equivalent would be a hot start around 400–425F for the first 20 minutes, then 350F to finish.
Hot-water paste of this sort is the working ancestor of the English raised pie — the free-standing crust moulded around game, veal or pork, strong enough to be carried and sliced cold. Oscar Tschirky's version is the hotel refinement of it: egg yolks for colour and richness, butter in place of the lard or drippings a farmhouse cook would have used, and a long cool rest that a pastry cook with a cold larder could afford.