Short Paste
Take one pound sifted flour, place it in a bowl, add to it half a pound good butter. Break the butter up very fine in the flour, adding a little salt (according to the saltness of the butter); now add half a pint of cold water with half a teaspoonful of cream of tartar dissolved in it (this is to toughen it), then mix it into an easy dough, adding more water, if required. When mixed, work well together, and place it near by ready for use. Keep it covered with a damp cloth, or between two plates, and in a cool place. Short paste is very useful from the fact that it is easy to make, and can be kept in better shape, where the shape of the article you wish to make is an object. It is also better adapted for lining the bottom of paste pans, dishes, etc., as it is firmer than puff paste. Consequently it holds together, and when you wish to make a great deal of pastry, it is well to make a little short paste for that purpose, using the short paste for all lining or bottom work, and the puff paste for all top work. In using puff paste, when you have not made any short paste, cut out all of the tops first, then take the scraps and roll them, using them for lining and bottoms. Now suppose we wish to make a few open tarts.
A plain shortcrust in professional proportions — half fat to flour — written for a cook who will use it as the workhorse under fillings while saving puff paste for lids. Two things need translating: the water quantity and the vessel names.
- Weights in modern termsOne pound of sifted flour is roughly 3½ to 4 cups (450 g); half a pound of butter is 225 g, or two American sticks. Weighing is worth it here, since the whole character of the paste is the 2:1 flour-to-fat ratio.
- Half a pint of water is a starting point, not a targetThat is one cup, which is a good deal of liquid for a pound of flour. Add it in stages and stop as soon as the dough coheres. The instruction to add "more water, if required" suggests the author expected variation.
- Cream of tartar does the opposite of what he saysCream of tartar may do the opposite of what he says -- He adds it "to toughen" the dough. Acid is more usually credited with slightly relaxing gluten, which is why cream of tartar, vinegar or lemon juice turn up in pastry recipes as an anti-toughening measure, though the effect is modest. Half a teaspoon in a pound of flour is a small, harmless amount either way.
- Salt"According to the saltness of the butter" reflects a period when butter salt levels swung wildly. Standard salted butter today runs about 1.5–2 percent salt; with it, add roughly ½ teaspoon of salt to the pound of flour, with unsalted butter about 1¼ teaspoons.
- "Paste" and "paste pans"Paste is simply pastry dough, and paste pans are pie and tart tins. "Short" is an old word for crumbly or friable; the explanation that the fat interferes with gluten development is the modern gloss. It has nothing to do with cooking time.
- Work it well, then let it restHe says to "work well together," which is more handling than a modern shortcrust recipe would advise. Rest the finished dough in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before rolling; the damp cloth and cool place of the original stood in for refrigeration.
- Baking the tart shellsNo oven heat is given. Blind-bake lined tart or pie shells at 400–425°F until the edges are set and pale gold, then fill. Filled open tarts generally do well starting hot and finishing at 350°F.
- YieldSomething over 800 g of dough once the water is in -- enough for roughly two 9-inch pie shells, or two dozen small open tart shells.
"Short paste" is the English trade name for what a French kitchen calls pâte brisée and an American home cook now calls shortcrust or plain pie dough, and the division of labour described here — short paste underneath, puff paste on top, puff scraps demoted to linings — is the practice of the professional pastry room, where nothing was wasted and the two doughs had settled roles. Its appearance in The Dixie Cook Book, a large Southern household compendium of the 1880s assembled from contributed and borrowed receipts, is characteristic of the genre: family recipes sit alongside passages that read as though taken from a working pastry cook's manual, complete with the chatty run-on into the next entry ("Now suppose we wish to make a few open tarts"). The cream of tartar is a period marker too. It was a common pantry item in the era of homemade baking powder, and cooks reached for it to solve problems well outside leavening — here, on a piece of reasoning that may be backwards, though the pastry comes out fine regardless.