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Galettes, Paysanne
Sift a half pound flour on the corner of a table, make a fountain in the centre, place two ounces butter, one saltspoon salt and one and a half gills cream in the fountain. Dilute the butter in the cream and gradually incorporate the flour, so as to obtain a smooth, firm paste, place it on a plate, cover with a cloth and let stand in moderate temperature for one hour. Roll the paste on a lightly floured table to the thickness of half an inch, and with the prongs of a fork prickle the surface of the paste, then cut it into six even, square pieces. Lay them on a lightly buttered baking sheet, set in a brisk oven for fifteen minutes, remove, dress them on a dish with a folded napkin, sprinkle a little powdered sugar over and serve.
A short, cream-based pastry cut into squares and baked hot — closer to a rich biscuit than a cake. The measurements are pre-metric but all convert cleanly.
- Quantities in modern termsHalf a pound of flour is about 1¾ cups (225 g); two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons (55 g). A gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of cream is ¾ cup (6 fl oz). A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon.
- "Brisk oven"Brisk means hot; period conversion tables put it at roughly 400–425°F. At that heat fifteen minutes is about right for half-inch squares, but start checking at twelve — they should be set and pale gold, not browned through.
- The fountainA fountain is a well in the middle of the flour heaped on the work surface. Working the butter into the cream first, as directed, is what keeps the dough short.
- CreamUse heavy or whipping cream, not half-and-half. Nineteenth-century "cream" was rich and unhomogenised, and the fat is doing the work here alongside the small amount of butter.
- The hour's rest"Moderate temperature" means room temperature, not a warm spot. The rest hydrates the flour and relaxes the gluten so the squares hold their shape rather than pulling in at the edges.
- Docking, not decorationPricking with a fork keeps the thick paste from doming as steam builds.
- Yield and servingSix squares, one apiece — a teatime or dessert accompaniment rather than a course. The folded napkin was a common period service for anything meant to arrive hot and dry; dust the sugar on after baking, off the heat.
Galette covers a wide family of flat baked things in French cooking, from buckwheat pancakes in Brittany to the puff-pastry galette des rois; the word is generally traced to Old French galet, a smooth flat pebble, which describes the shape well enough. Paysanne — peasant-style — marks this as the plain country version: flour, butter, cream, salt, sugar at the end, with no eggs, no leavening and no filling. Mixing on the bare table in a well of flour, rather than in a bowl, was common professional practice.