Coventry Puff
For these take scraps of puff paste and roll out into a sheet one-fourth of an inch in thickness. Cut the number of pieces you require with a plain round cutter three inches in diameter. Roll these out same as for raspberry puffs; add some fancy preserves, then fold or lap the paste over in three folds, so that when it is folded it will form a triangle. Then turn the folded part down on the baking pans, wash these with water, or egg and water; dust with powdered sugar, and bake. You do not cut these on the top.
A scrap-pastry recipe, written for a bakeshop where trimmings from the day's puff paste accumulated and had to be used. The instructions assume you already know the house method for raspberry puffs; the notes below fill in what the original leaves unsaid.
- Scraps of puff pastePuff trimmings do not rise as evenly as freshly laminated dough, so they were generally put to uses where an even lift mattered less. Stack the scraps flat in layers rather than balling them up, chill them firm, then roll — kneading them together destroys what lamination is left. A pound of all-butter frozen puff pastry stands in well.
- "Roll these out same as for raspberry puffs"The house method for raspberry puffs is not given here, so the cross-reference cannot be pinned down. The sense is presumably that each 3-inch round is rolled thinner and longer — an oval of perhaps 4 to 5 inches — so there is enough surface to fold in three. Roll mainly in one direction to keep the shape from distorting.
- Fancy preserves"Fancy" was commonly used to mark better-quality fruit preserves as against plain jam. Use a thick, well-set preserve; anything loose will boil out at the folds, and keep the quantity small — roughly a teaspoon per puff.
- The fold, and why it goes seam-downThree folds bringing the ends over the centre give the triangle. Turning the folded part down on the pan puts the seams underneath, where the weight of the pastry keeps them shut. This is the hinge of the recipe: filled pastry that bakes seam-up leaks, and the sugar in the preserve welds it to the tin.
- Wash and sugarWater alone gives a matte finish that holds the sugar; egg and water gives colour and gloss. Dust lightly with confectioners' sugar — a heavy coat scorches before the pastry is through, and at high heat the sugar will caramelise to bitterness in the last few minutes.
- "You do not cut these on the top"The instruction is spelled out because other puff pastries of the kind were often scored or vented. Here the steam is presumably meant to stay in and lift the folds, which also means the puffs must be well sealed or it will find its own way out.
- OvenNone is given. Puff paste of this kind wants a hot oven, 400 to 425F, on a parchment-lined sheet, for 15 to 20 minutes, until the layers are set and deep gold. A cooler oven melts the butter out before the layers can rise.
- YieldA pound of puff pastry rolled to a quarter inch yields roughly 12 to 16 three-inch rounds. Serve warm or at room temperature the day they are baked; they soften overnight.
The name points to Coventry, the English Midlands city whose "Coventry godcakes" — triangular pastry turnovers filled with mincemeat or jam, traditionally given by godparents to godchildren at New Year — are the obvious ancestor. The triangle is generally said to represent the Trinity, and the godcake proper is slashed three times on top; this recipe, by contrast, insists you do not cut the top. The entry reads like a professional pastry manual: it addresses a baker with a bench full of trimmings and an established house method for raspberry puffs, not a housewife starting from nothing. Recipes for using up puff-paste scraps were a fixture of nineteenth-century pastry sections.