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Paste for One Pie
Sift half pound flour on a table. Make a "fountain" (hollow space) in the centre, place into it one and a half ounces butter, one gill cold water and one and a half saltspoons salt. Then with the hand mix the butter, water and salt briskly for three minutes and gradually and slowly incorporate the flour with the rest, mixing for five minutes. Lay the paste on a plate, cover it with a towel and place in A cool place to rest for a few minutes. Have ready three ounces well-washed butter in a lump; return the paste to the table, flatten it lightly, then place the lump of butter in the centre, fold over the edges so as to enclose the butter, roll it out lengthwise with the pastry roller and refold the paste into three folds. Let it rest again in a cool place for three minutes; then roll it again, fold it as before and set in the ice box for five minutes.
How to Make the Pie.--Cut out half the prepared paste, roll it out round, ten inches in diameter. Lightly butter a pie plate nine and a half inches in diameter. Arrange the paste nicely over it. Then take up from the jar one and a half pounds prepared mince, lay it over the lined pie plate; evenly flatten it, leaving one inch clear around the edge of the plate; take the remaining half of the paste, roll it out round, fold it in two and with a knife make three light incisions, each half an inch in the centre. Lightly moisten the edge of the plate with beaten egg, then cover with the paste, pressing it down with the hands all around the edge so as to entirely enclose the preparation, and then lightly moisten the surface with beaten egg. Place it then in a moderate oven to bake for forty minutes. Remove it to the oven door, liberally sprinkle powdered sugar over, return it to the oven, close the door for two minutes so as to have the sugar entirely melted. Remove from the oven, then lay the pie on a dessert dish and serve either hot or cold.
This is a rough puff paste built by the French method, with a mince pie assembled from a jar of prepared mincemeat. The pastry technique is sound; only the resting times need rethinking.
- The weights in cupsHalf a pound of flour is about 1 3/4 to 2 cups; the 1 1/2 oz of butter worked into the flour is 3 tablespoons, and the 3 oz lump folded in later is 6 tablespoons. Weighing gives a far more reliable dough than measuring.
- A gill and a saltspoonA gill is half a cup (4 fl oz) and a saltspoon a quarter teaspoon, so 1 1/2 saltspoons is a scant half teaspoon. Flour absorbency varies, so add most of the water and judge the last of it by feel.
- Rest the dough properlyThe three-to-five-minute rests assume a cool kitchen and cool hands. In a modern warm room, chill 20-30 minutes between turns; butter that softens into the flour gives a mealy crust rather than layers.
- "Well-washed butter"Nineteenth-century butter was often salty and held buttermilk, so cooks kneaded it under cold water to rinse both out. Unsalted butter straight from the refrigerator, pounded flat between sheets of paper until pliable but still cool, does the job.
- Moderate ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; a moderate oven was generally reckoned at somewhere around 350-375F. Some bakers prefer to start puff paste hotter, near 400F for the first 15 minutes, then drop back. The forty minutes total is about right for a 9 1/2-inch pie.
- Prepared minceThe mincemeat is assumed to be already made and sitting in a jar: suet, dried fruit, spices, spirits, sometimes minced beef or tongue. A jar of commercial mincemeat, 1 1/2 lb or roughly 3 cups, substitutes directly.
- The sugar glazeSprinkling powdered sugar over the hot pie and returning it briefly to melt is a classic pastry glaze. Watch it two minutes at 350F melts the sugar; much longer and it scorches. A blast under the broiler for under a minute gives the same lacquer.
- YieldOne 9 1/2-inch double-crust pie, six to eight servings. The paste quantity is calculated for exactly this pie, with nothing to spare.
The International Cook Book is generally attributed to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the pastry method here shows it: the "fountain" of flour with the liquid worked in at the centre is the standard French bench technique, described as it would have been demonstrated to an apprentice rather than as a home cook would improvise it. The pie itself is thoroughly English mince pies descend from the medieval and early modern habit of baking spiced dried fruit with minced meat and suet, a combination that gradually lost the meat over the nineteenth century until only the suet remained as a trace. That Filippini assumes his reader has a jar of mince already put by is telling: mincemeat was made in quantity in autumn and drawn on for months, and a cookbook of this period expected the pantry to have done half the work before the recipe began.