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Raspberry Puff
Proceed precisely the same as for open tarts. When you have cut the desired number, roll them out thin, about six inches in diameter, Now place a teaspoonful of raspberry preserves on it, a little from the center, spread it a little, and then bring the back part over on the preserve, keeping it back a little from the front edge, for if it laps over the bottom edge is prevented from rising. It is best to allow the top edge to lie back from the the front edge at least one-fourth of an inch. This folding forms a half circle. This being done, wash them with water, or egg and water, and dust them with powdered sugar. Also cut a few deep but shorą cuts across the top-over where the preserve lays-when baked, the preserve shows through.
A puff-paste turnover, written for a cook who has already read the entry for open tarts and knows how to make and roll rough puff or flaky pastry. The instructions are all about the fold; the oven is left entirely to your judgement.
- The hinge: keep the top edge shortThe whole point of the fold is that the upper half of the dough sits about a quarter inch back from the lower edge rather than meeting it. In puff paste, an edge crimped or lapped over is pinned down and cannot lift, so the bottom stays flat and heavy. Leaving the lower edge free lets both layers rise.
- "Proceed the same as for open tarts"The logic of the fold (an edge lapped over cannot lift) implies a raising paste, so puff or flaky paste is the likely reading, though the open-tart entry is not quoted here. Note the order: portions are cut first, then each is rolled out thin to about six inches across. The quantity of paste is left to the cook.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Puff paste wants a hot oven: 425F for the first 12-15 minutes to drive the steam, then drop to 375F for another 8-10 if the pastry is browning faster than it is drying out.
- A teaspoonful is not much, and that is deliberateA teaspoonful is not much -- the recipe gives no reason for the small quantity, but a teaspoon of thick preserve, spread thin and kept back from the edges, is little enough not to flood the paste. The recipe does call for a wash, though on the top rather than as a seal.
- Wash and sugarWater alone gives a matte finish; egg beaten with a little water gives gloss and colour. Dust the powdered sugar on after the wash while it is still tacky, before baking, so it melts to a light glaze.
- The cutsDeep but short slashes directly over the jam, not across the whole top. They vent steam and let the preserve show as dark seams. Cut them with a very sharp blade so the pastry is severed rather than dragged.
- Chill before bakingNot in the original, but the folding and washing warms the butter. Fifteen minutes in the refrigerator on the baking sheet before the oven makes the difference between layers and a puddle.
- YieldAs many as you choose; the recipe says only 'the desired number'. They are best within a few hours of baking, while the pastry is still crisp underneath.
The Dixie Cook Book belongs to the wave of large compiled American household volumes of the 1880s, sold by subscription and padded out with hundreds of contributed and borrowed receipts; its pastry section reads as though it came from a professional baker rather than a housewife, with its talk of desired numbers, six-inch rounds and quarter-inch margins. The turnover itself is much older than the book: a filled half-circle of pastry is one of the oldest forms in European baking, and the puff-paste version appears to have been familiar confectioners' work in Britain and America well before the Civil War, though the point is inference rather than documented fact. Raspberry was plausibly the natural filling for a book like this, one imagines, because preserves were what a household actually had on the shelf in the months when no fruit was ripe, and a stiff, well-set jam holds its shape in a hot oven where fresh fruit would flood the paste.