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Paste and Pastry (Crust For Raised Pies lb)
Crust For Raised Pies. ¼ lb. of butter, 1½ gills of water, 1 teaspoonful of salt. Let it quite boil. Mix with as near 1 lb. of flour as it will take up. When the paste is boiling hot roll it out, and when cool enough to work, cut and make your pie and bake. "Feuilletage" Puff Paste - Cataldi's. (Excellent.) Put 1 lb. of flour on a pastry board, make a hole in the middle, into which squeeze the juice of a lemon, add the yolk of an egg and a pinch of salt. Mix all with cold water into a thick paste. Work it well with your hands, then let it stand for about 10 minutes, after which add by degrees 1 lb. of butter. Roll the paste, putting the butter in the middle and folding it up. Next roll again 2½ feet long, butter, and fold up in 3. Do this over and over again, at least 6 times, and then the paste is ready. The butter separates the pastry into the thinnest possible layers or leaves.
This recipe is excellent for Vol au vents.
Marrow for Short Crust. See Short Sugar Paste.
Pie Crust. (Mrs. Pettit.) For hot game or meat pies. ¾ lb. flour, ½ lb. fresh butter.
To make it, take ¼ lb. of the butter, and mix with the whole of the flour; work up in the hand till it becomes like bread - crumbs, then mix it into a stiff paste with a little cold water, and roll out thin, and spread over it the rest of the butter. Roll out 3 times, fold in 4 each time, then let it lie an hour or more, after which roll out again 3 times, and fold in 4 as before.
Do not make the pie for 2 or 3 hours more, as the paste must rest a second time. A pie takes ½ lb. of paste.
Three distinct pastes in one entry: a hot-water crust for raised pies, a full puff paste, and a rough-puff for hot game pies. None gives an oven temperature, and one measurement is a clear misprint.
- "34 lb. flour" is a typoMrs. Pettit's pie crust means ¾ lb flour to ½ lb butter, which matches the method (a quarter-pound rubbed in, the rest laminated). Read it as 12 oz flour, 8 oz butter.
- GillsAn imperial gill is 5 fl oz, so 1½ gills is about 7½ fl oz — a scant cup. That is right for 1 lb flour in a hot-water crust; add it while boiling and hold back a little if the dough slackens.
- "As near 1 lb of flour as it will take up"Hot-water crust is deliberately judged by feel. Aim for a dough that is firm and slightly tacky, not sticky; flour absorbency and the exact water loss to steam vary enough that the weight is a target rather than a rule.
- Work it hotThis is the hinge of the raised-pie crust. It must be moulded while genuinely warm — once it cools it cracks instead of stretching, and once it is shaped it should be filled and baked before it chills through.
- Oven heatThe recipe says only 'bake'; no oven heat is indicated here or in the other two pastes. Modern practice is a hot oven at the start to set the walls of a raised pie before dropping the heat for the long bake, and a hot, steady oven for puff and vol-au-vents so the layers lift before the butter runs — but no figures of any kind can be drawn from the original.
- "Roll again 2½ feet long"Cataldi's puff is rolled into a long strip and folded in three — a standard single turn. Six turns with 1 lb butter to 1 lb flour is a rich full puff; keeping the paste cool between turns helps, though the original says nothing about chilling.
- Why lemon juice and egg yolkThe acid relaxes the gluten so the dough stretches without tearing; the yolk adds a little fat and colour. Neither is essential, but both make repeated turns easier.
- Don't cut the resting shortMrs. Pettit's instruction to rest an hour, roll again, then wait two or three hours before making the pie is not fussiness. The gluten relaxes and the butter re-firms, which is what stops the crust shrinking away from the filling in the oven.
- YieldThe note that "a pie takes ½ lb of paste" is the useful figure: ¾ lb flour and ½ lb butter come to 1¼ lb before the water is added, so the batch makes somewhat more than that — enough for two covered pies, or one large one with a lid and a lining.
Lady Clark's book, assembled from her own notes and published in 1909 after her death, is a collector's book rather than an author's — hence the attributions to Cataldi and Mrs. Pettit set side by side. The three pastes map the Victorian division of labour in a pastry kitchen: hot-water crust, among the oldest of the English pie doughs, for the standing raised pies of game and pork that were cut cold at table and whose walls had to hold their own shape; feuilletage, the French laminated paste, for vol-au-vents and other show pieces; and a rough-puff in between for hot game pies where the crust was eaten with the gravy.