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Good Common Paste
One coffee-cup lard, three of sifted flour, and a little salt. In winter soften the lard a little (but not in summer), cut it well into the flour with a knife, then mix with cold water quickly into a moderately stiff dough, handling as little as possible. This makes four common-sized covered pies. Take a new slice of paste each time for top crust. After rolling spread with a tea-spoon, butter, fold and roll again, using the trimmings, etc., for under crust.- Miss Katy Rupp.
A plain lard pie crust with a rough-puff finish, given in the compressed style of the period: no water quantity, no oven, no baking time. The proportions are sound and translate directly.
- Coffee-cup measureIn American books of this era a coffee-cup is generally reckoned at about 1 cup (8 fl oz), a teacup at about three-quarters of that. So: 1 cup lard (roughly 7 oz) to 3 cups flour (about 13 oz), which is a rich crust by modern standards but not unusual for lard pastry.
- Water is left to youNo quantity is given because it depends on the flour. Expect 6 to 8 tablespoons of ice water for 3 cups of flour, added a spoonful at a time until the mass just coheres when pressed.
- The hinge: handling as little as possibleThis is the one instruction that decides the outcome. Cut the lard in until the largest pieces are the size of peas, stop mixing the moment the dough holds together, and do not knead. Overworked lard pastry turns hard rather than short.
- Lard has changedThe lard sold shelf-stable in blocks today is usually hydrogenated and behaves differently from freshly rendered lard. Leaf lard from a butcher will give a cleaner flavour and good flake, though the household lard of Miss Rupp's day was not necessarily leaf.
- "Soften in winter, not in summer"This is temperature control in a kitchen without refrigeration. Modern equivalent: the fat should be firm but not rock-hard, and the dough wants 30 minutes' rest in the refrigerator before rolling, which the original does not mention.
- The butter foldSpreading the rolled sheet with a teaspoon of butter, folding and rolling again is a rough-puff technique. The reservation of fresh paste for the top crust points the same way, with the trimmings, already worked once, going underneath where flakiness matters less.
- YieldThe recipe claims four common-sized covered pies, in plates of the period that tended to be shallower than modern dishes. Reckon on rather fewer covered pies if you are using deep modern plates.
- BakingNo oven is given, as the book assumes you know from the filling. For a covered fruit pie, 425F for the first 20 minutes to set and colour the crust, then 350F until the filling bubbles.
Lard, not butter, was the usual pastry fat in American home baking through much of the 19th century: it was a by-product of the household hog, it kept without ice, and it produces a crust that is short and tender at proportions where butter would need more care. The Dixie Cook-Book (1883) was one of the large compiled regional cookbooks of the era, assembled from contributions signed by name, and the attribution to "Miss Katy Rupp" is typical of the form: recipes circulated within church and neighbourhood networks and were printed largely as received, abbreviations and all. "Paste" for pastry dough is the older English usage, still current in American books at this date alongside "pie crust"; "common" here means everyday, distinguishing it from puff paste.