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Plainer Pastry
One cup of butter, one cup of lard, a little salt, cut through the flour and mix lightly together. Some cooks mix the lard through the flour and mix with water and then roll out; when in a sheet cut the batter into thin sheets, fold over and lay aside, cutting off from the roll what is used for the bottom or top crust as wanted.
This is a shortened pie pastry written for cooks who already knew the proportions; the flour and water are left to judgment. Read it as a method note rather than a formula.
- The missing flourNo flour quantity is given. Two cups of fat is a great deal; working by volume, something like 4 cups of flour to the cup of butter and cup of lard here gives a workable rich pastry, enough for three or four single crusts.
- Water is unmeasured tooThe original says only "mix with water." Add it ice-cold, a tablespoon at a time, until the dough just coheres when pressed. Any figure printed here would be invented; flour absorbency varies too much.
- "Cut the batter into thin sheets"This is probably "butter," not "batter" — the butter sliced thin, laid over the rolled dough and folded in. If so, the second method is a rough puff or half-laminated paste rather than a plain rubbed-in crust.
- The hinge: keep the fat coldEverything about this pastry depends on the butter staying in visible pieces. Chill the butter and lard, work with fingertips or a pastry blender rather than warm hands, and stop mixing while the dough still looks shaggy.
- LardMost shelf-stable supermarket lard is hydrogenated and behaves differently from the softer, unhydrogenated lard of the period; refrigerated leaf lard gives the tender, flaky result intended. Vegetable shortening substitutes cup for cup, at some cost in flavor.
- "Lay aside"Between folds, and again before baking, rest the wrapped dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. A heated modern kitchen softens the fat faster than a cool larder or pantry would have.
- BakingNo oven guidance is given. A pastry this rich wants a hot start — 425F for the first 15 minutes to set the layers, then 350F until the filling is done.
- "Plainer"The title is presumably relative to richer puff pastes, which take far more butter and many more turns; this one is plainer in taking fewer folds, if any.
Nineteenth-century American pie pastry sat between two traditions: the many-folded French feuilletage and the plain rubbed-in short crust of English farmhouse cooking. Recipes like this one show a compromise available to households — half butter for flavor, half lard for shortness, with a few quick folds to get some flake without the labor of a true puff paste. The instruction to roll a long sheet and cut off "what is used for the bottom or top crust as wanted" reflects a kitchen that baked pies several at a time and kept paste on hand in a cool larder, a habit often said to have faded with the arrival of refrigeration and, later, the ready-rolled crust.