To Use Suet
Allow three quarters of a pound of beef suet for every pound of flour; in this case adding a little salt to the water you mix the flour with. First take the suet, divest it of all loose skin and blood spots, then with a sharp knife shred it in as fine slices as possible, then place it in some place where it will just feel the heat, nothing more (it must not be any thing like melted). While this is softening mix the dough; when mixed roll out in a sheet, the same as for best pastry, then lay on the suet to cover the dough, then fold and roll the same as for best pastry. (See instructions for puff pastry.) This paste will require a few more foldings and rollings than as if made with butter. When it is rolled enough, proceed to cover the pie dish as you would with other pastry; also for patties, mince pies, etc., use and work it off precisely as you would for puff pastry. If you were (after shredding the suet) to beat it soft with the rolling-pin on the board, you could roll out the paste with more ease, and it would not take more than five minutes.
A very fine butter, called "French butter," for making an extra short yet flaky pastry, is made as follows: Take three quarters of a pound of beet suet, a quarter of a pound of good butter, and the yolk of two eggs, and a half teaspoon of salt; remove the skin and blood spots from the suet, place it in a mortar, pound it soft, then add the butter and salt, pound that well in, then add the eggs, work the whole into a smooth mass, then use it in the same quantity and in the same manner as for puff pastry.
This suet crust rolled half an inch thick, and then into cakes with a cutter, say two inches in diameter, then washed with eggs and a few cuts given across the top with a sharp knife, and baked a nice rich brown in a middling hot even, makes a delicious article for the tea-table. It is not as gross as puff paste.
I give here the best method of making a few of the hundred and one articles to be produced with puff and short pastry, etc. The following is the most simple and best method of making short paste.
A suet-based laminated pastry with a second, richer variant the author calls "French butter." The method is puff pastry logic applied to beef fat, and it works, provided the fat never crosses into liquid.
- The hinge: warm, never meltedSuet must be soft enough to spread but still solid. Set it near a warm oven or over a pilot for a few minutes only, or skip the heat entirely and pound the shredded suet with the rolling pin as the recipe suggests further down. Once any of it liquefies it soaks into the dough and you get a tough, greasy short crust rather than layers.
- Ratio and quantitiesThree quarters of a pound of suet to one pound of flour, so roughly 12 oz suet to 3 1/2 cups flour. The water is unspecified in the original; add it gradually and work up to a firm, not sticky, dough.
- "Beet suet" is a typoThe second paragraph calls for "three quarters of a pound of beet suet." It means beef suet, as in the first paragraph.
- Sourcing the suetAsk a butcher for fresh beef kidney suet; the hard, dry fat from around the kidneys is what this recipe wants. Packaged shredded suet sold for puddings is often already blended with flour or is vegetable-based, which will change the hydration. If you use fresh suet, peel off every scrap of membrane and cut out blood spots as instructed, or the crust will taste strongly of tallow.
- Shredding"As fine slices as possible" is easier with the suet well chilled, then softened afterwards. A cold half-hour in the freezer makes it sliceable instead of smeary.
- Extra turnsThe instruction that this paste needs more foldings than butter puff is accurate. Beef suet has a much higher melting point than butter, so it stays in discrete sheets under the pin and does not thin out as readily. Add a couple of turns beyond whatever your puff pastry method calls for, resting the dough cold between the last two.
- "Middling hot oven"For the two-inch tea cakes at the end, read this as somewhere around 375 to 400F; period oven language is not precise. They want enough heat to set the layers fast, so check them from about 15 minutes, until deep brown.
- YieldA pound of flour makes enough paste for about two 9-inch double-crust pies, or several dozen of the two-inch tea cakes.
- What it tastes likeSavoury and beefy. It suits meat pies, patties and old-style mince pies made with actual suet and beef; it is not a good match for a fresh fruit tart. The "French butter" version, cut with a quarter pound of butter and two yolks, is milder and the better choice for the tea cakes.
Suet pastry belongs to the British kitchen, where beef fat was the cheap, keeping fat and butter the dear one, and where suet crusts, dumplings and boiled puddings held the middle of the table for centuries. What is unusual here is the attempt to laminate it in the French manner rather than simply rubbing it in: the author treats suet as a substitute block fat for puff paste and honestly notes that it takes more turns and produces something "not as gross as puff paste," meaning less rich and heavy. The confident first-person voice and the phrase "a hundred and one articles" give the passage the tone of a professional pastry manual, though whether it was drawn from one is not established. The reliance on kidney suet also dates it to a period when a household bought meat from a butcher who broke the carcass himself.