Pastry Shells
Prepare Rich Pie Crust, roll to one-eighth inch thickness and fit onto inverted muffin pans, pricking about the edges to allow the air beneath to escape. Bake in a hot oven about fifteen minutes. Use in making tarts or instead of patty shells for the serving of creamed meat or fish.
A method rather than a formula: the pastry is shaped over the outside of upturned muffin cups so it holds a cup shape without a filling to support it. A few points on temperature and handling.
- "Hot oven"Read this as somewhere in the 400-450F band; 425F is a reasonable middle. Fifteen minutes at that heat sets and colours thin pastry.
- The pricking is the hingeAir trapped between dough and metal will lift the pastry off the cup and distort it. The recipe directs pricking about the edges; press the dough firmly onto the pan so no pocket remains.
- Inverted muffin pansTurn the tin upside down and drape a round of dough over each raised cup, easing it down the sides. Rounds cut about 4 inches across suit a standard cup; trim the edges level so the finished shell sits flat when righted.
- Rich Pie CrustThe book's own crust recipe, called for by name here. Any all-butter pate brisee will serve; keeping the dough cold helps thin pastry hold its shape.
- Chill before bakingThe recipe gives no chilling step, but a spell in the refrigerator once shaped will help warm, thin pastry keep its shape on the metal.
- Patty shellsThe original patty shell is a puff-pastry case, laborious to make at home. This is a deliberate shortcut for the same purpose, holding creamed chicken, sweetbreads or fish.
- Yield and keepingThe number of shells depends on the quantity of pastry and the size of the tin. They can be baked ahead and kept in a tin, but fill only at the moment of serving or the base goes soft.
The shell exists because of the sauce. Creamed meats and fish, bound with a flour-thickened white sauce, ran through American supper menus from the late nineteenth century into the mid twentieth, and each portion needed a container: a puff-pastry vol-au-vent, a slice of toast, a timbale case fried in deep fat, or a hollowed roll. Genuine patty shells demanded laminated puff pastry, and moulding ordinary short crust over the back of a muffin tin is one substitute a home cook could manage. Supper in books of this kind is generally the lighter evening meal after a midday dinner.