Home › Pastry › Paste with Suet
Paste with Suet
Roll a half-pound of the best suet, with very little membrane running through it, on a board for several minutes, removing all the skin and fibers that appear when rolling; the suet will be a pure and sweet shortening, looking like butter; or the suet may be chopped fine and the fibers removed. Rub the suet into a pound of flour, add a tea-spoon salt, and mix it with a half pint of ice-water; roll out for the plates, and put on a little butter in flakes, rolling it in as usual. Some add a tea-spoon bakingpowder.
A frugal pie pastry from the era when butter was dear and beef fat was free from the butcher. It works, but the proportions need reading with a modern eye.
- The hinge: keep the suet cold and the water colderSuet has a higher melting point than butter, which helps a suet crust hold its structure in the oven. The rolling described here is for removing skin and fibres; work fast and chill the mass before rolling out so the fat does not soften.
- Suet, and what to buyFresh beef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys; a butcher will usually supply it on request, though it is rarely on display. Packaged shredded suet (the British-style boxed kind) can be substituted and skips the rolling and picking entirely, though it is usually dusted with flour, so the fat-to-flour balance will not be exactly weight for weight.
- MeasuresA half pint is one cup. A pound of flour is roughly 3 1/2 cups scooped, or better, weigh it. Half a pound of suet to a pound of flour is a standard suet-crust ratio.
- Hold back the waterA full cup of water to a pound of flour is generous for pastry and will give a tough crust if all of it goes in. Add it in stages and stop as soon as the dough coheres; suet-shortened dough needs more liquid than a butter dough but not necessarily all of this.
- The butter flakesDotting butter over the rolled sheet and folding it in is a rough laminating turn, the same principle as rough puff. Two or three turns with a rest in the refrigerator between them is plenty.
- The optional baking powderA teaspoon lifts the crust slightly and makes it more forgiving; it also pushes the result toward the texture of a suet dumpling crust rather than a true short pastry. Leave it out for a crisper bottom.
- OvenNo temperature is given; the recipe leaves the oven to the cook's judgement. Suet crust wants a hot start: about 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the layers, then 350F to finish.
- YieldEnough for two 9-inch double-crust pies, or four single shells. The dough keeps wrapped in the refrigerator for two days and freezes well.
- Flavor noteThis is not a neutral crust. It carries a faint beefy savor that suits mincemeat, apple and other spiced fillings far better than a delicate custard or cream pie.
Suet crust is an inheritance from British kitchens, where beef suet did the work of butter in everything from dumplings to boiled puddings, and it survived in American cookbooks — plausibly, though this is inference rather than documented practice, because suet came home with the meat while butter could be sold. The care taken here over the fat is telling — the rolling and picking out of membrane exists because badly cleaned suet tastes of tallow, and the goal, stated outright, is a shortening "looking like butter." The compromise of dotting a little real butter into the rolled sheet suggests a bargain of the same kind: most of the fat costs nothing, and the small expensive part goes where it will be tasted. Lard and later vegetable shortening pushed suet out of American pastry, though it holds its place in British suet puddings to this day.