Open Tarts
Take the puff paste, after it has received its last rolling, roll out evenly in a sheet one-fourth of an inch in thickness (you need not roll out the whole of the paste, but cut off a piece sufficient to make the number of tarts you wish, and roll them out). The sheet being ready, cut the number you require with a scalloped round cutter, about two and a half inches in diameter. Place them on the baking pans, having turned them over, bringing the bottom on the top. Next wash them with egg, or egg and water, then with a small, plain round cutter, one inch in diameter, make a mark in the center of each, pressing the cutter half through. Then just "dock" each in the center with the point of a knife or a fork (this is to prevent their blistering), now bake them. You will then find that the part marked with the small, round cutter has detached itself from the other part; this you remove with a penknife or a fork, and a hole will be left, into which pour what jam or jelly you intend using. This plan is far preferable for making the hole to receive the jelly than to place, as some recommend, sliced potatoes or small yieces of wood in the center, removing them when baked. These certainly form the hole, but their weight keeps down the pastry, and consequently it is not so light. By the plan I have given you obtain a good hole for the jelly without injuring the lightness of the pastry. Some add their jelly before baking, but that is wrong, as in baking the heat causes the jelly to boil, and it spreads itself over the tart and spoils its appearance. OYSTER PATE (A LA PYRAMID).
Take a piece of short paste, or scraps of puff paste, roll it out one-fourth of an inch thick, and cut out the number of pieces you require with the same cutter as for open tarts, place them in baking pan and "dock" them with a fork. Now cut a like number with the same cutter, and of the same thickness, but from the best puff paste, wash those cut from the scraps, or short paste, and place those cut from the puff paste on them, wash with egg, and "dock" them in the middle. Next cut a like number, same thickness, with the same cutter, and from puff paste, cut the middle right out of these with a plain round cutter, one inch and a half in diameter, place these rings on the other parts. These are now ready to bake. While they are baking take the piece that comes from the middle of the ring piece and roll it out a little larger, then cut three other pieces with a scalloped round cutter, each a size smaller than the others; place them on baking pans, "dock" them, wash with egg, and bake them. When these parts are all baked, if the hole is not deep enough for the purpose, you can, with a knife, remove some of the pastry inside the ring. To serve these you fill the case, or part with the hole, with chopped oysters, prepared in white butter sauce, and then add the other pieces, beginning with the largest and finishing with the smallest. You will then have a pyramid about six inches high. Place small sprigs of These parsley between the part containing the oysters and the others, also a piece of parsley on each, then dish them and serve. cases will serve for oysters, lobsters, or chicken. I would here remark that oyster and other pates can be made more simply than the above, but my idea is not to attempt to teach what I presume is already known, but to furnish you with some ideas which you may use with advantage when you wish to place something more elabrate before your special guests than ordinarily. A vol au vent is made in precisely the same manner as the above oyster pates, but from eight to twelve times larger, and generally oval in shape. It is usually filled with cold fricassee of fowl or chicken. The fricassee for a vol au vent must be good and well-jellied. Before serving a vol au 'vent, place it on an oval dish and garnish it tastefully with aspic jelly, parsley, and cut root flowers. An ordinary size for a vol au vent would be a case large enough to hold a fricassee of one large fowl or two chickens.
Two related pieces of confectioner's work: a jam tart with a lid cut in by knifework rather than a weight, and a stacked oyster case built from the same cutter in graduated rings. The original gives no temperature and no times, which is the main gap to fill.
- Oven heatPuff paste of this thinness wants a hot oven — around 425F, dropping to 400F if the edges colour before the layers have set. The original gives no oven direction at all. Expect roughly 12-18 minutes for the small tarts; the ring-and-base assemblies for the pâtés take longer, perhaps 20-25 minutes, because there are three thicknesses stacked.
- The hingeScore the inner circle only halfway through the paste. Cut all the way and you get a loose disc that floats off and the walls collapse; too shallow and the lid will not release cleanly after baking. Half-depth on a quarter-inch sheet is about an eighth of an inch.
- Why the paste is turned overInverting each cut round puts the compressed, cutter-bruised face down; the usual trade explanation is that this face rises less, so the tart lifts evenly instead of leaning.
- "Dock"To dock is to pierce, letting steam out so the centre does not balloon into a dome. A fork twice in the middle is enough; do not perforate the wall of the ring or the filling will seep.
- Jelly after baking, not beforeThe book is right and the reasoning holds: jam put in raw boils over and glazes the outside. Warm the jam slightly and spoon it in while the shells are still hot so it settles level, then let it set.
- Short paste vs. puff scraps"Short paste" is plain shortcrust; "scraps" are re-rolled puff trimmings, which have lost their lamination and so make a stable base. Keep your best-laminated sheet for the rings that must rise.
- White butter sauceThe filling is oysters bound in a butter-thickened white sauce. Shucked oysters need barely two minutes in the hot sauce — poach them until the edges just ruffle; longer and they toughen.
- Yield and scaleA two-and-a-half-inch cutter on a sheet rolled from about a pound of puff paste gives perhaps 15-20 rounds, so around a dozen and a half open tarts, or five or six pyramids once you account for the graduated tiers each needs. The vol-au-vent case, described as eight to twelve times larger, works out at roughly 7-9 inches across; "one large fowl or two chickens" is something like 2-2.5 lb of picked cooked meat.
- Cut root flowersThe garnish means vegetables — carrot, turnip, beet — cut into flower shapes, standard Victorian cold-buffet decoration. Aspic jelly is a savoury gelatine set from clarified stock.
The instructional voice here — first person, addressing an apprentice, correcting "some" who recommend sliced potato or wooden blocks as pastry weights — belongs to the professional confectioner rather than the plantation kitchen, and it sits somewhat oddly in The Dixie Cook Book (a late nineteenth-century American compilation of the kind that absorbed material from many sources). The vol-au-vent, literally "flight in the wind" in French, is generally traced to early nineteenth-century Parisian pastry work and Antonin Carême's circle. The stacked "a la pyramid" pâté is the same idea in miniature, built to be tall on the plate at a period when height and architectural garnish counted as much as flavour — hence the author's frank admission that the point is not instruction in the necessary but decoration for "special guests." Oysters in this role were unremarkable: they were cheap, shipped inland by barrel and rail.