The easiest way in housekeeping and cooking

Rub the lard and salt into the flour till it is dry and crumbly. Add the ice-water, and work to a smooth dough. Wash the butter, and have it cold and firm as possible. Divide it in three parts. Roll out the paste, and dot it all over with bits from one part of the butter. Sprinkle with flour, and roll up. Roll out, and repeat till the butter is gone. If the crust can now stand on the ice for half an hour, it will be nicer and more flaky. This amount will make three good-sized pies. Enough for the bottom crusts can be taken off after one rolling in of butter, thus making the top crust richer. Lard alone will make a tender, but not a flaky, paste. Puff Paste. One pound of flour ; three-quarters of a pound of butter ; one teacupful of ice-water ; one teaspoonful of salt, and one of sugar ; yolk of one egg. Wash the butter ; divide into three parts, reserving a bit the size of an egg ; and put it on the ice for an hour. Rub the bit of butter, the salt, and sugar, into the flour, and stir in the ice-water and egg beaten together. Make into a dough, and knead on the molding-board till glossy and firm : at least ten minutes will be required. Roll out into a sheet ten or twelve inches square. Cut a cake of the ice-cold butter in thin slices, or flatten it very thin with the rolling-pin. Lay it on the paste, sprinkle with flour, and fold over the edges. Press it in somewhat with the rolling-pin, and roll out again. Always roll from you. Do this again and again till the butter is all used, rolling up the paste after the last cake is in, and then putting it on the ice for an hour or more. Have filling all ready, and let the paste be as nearly ice-cold as possible when it goes into the oven. There are much more elaborate rules ; but this insures handsome paste. Make a plainer one for the bottom crusts. Cover puff paste with a damp cloth, and it may be kept on the ice a day or two before baking. Patties from Puff Paste. Roll the paste about a third of an inch thick, and cut out with a round or oval cutter about two inches in diameter. Take a cutter half an inch smaller, and press it into the piece already cut out, so as to sink half-way through the crust : this to mark out the top piece. Lay on tins, and bake to a delicate brown. They should treble in thickness by rising, and require from twenty minutes to half an hour to bake. When done, the marked-out top can easily be removed. Take out the soft inside, and fill with sweetmeats for dessert, or with minced chicken or oysters prepared as on p. 149. Grandmother's Apple Pie. Line a deep pie-plate with plain paste. Pare sour apples, — greenings are best; quarter, and cut in thin slices. Allow one cup of sugar, and quarter of a grated nutmeg mixed with it. Fill the pie-plate heaping full of the sliced apple, sprinkling the sugar between the layers. It will require not less than six good- sized apples. Wet the edges of the pie with cold water ; lay on the cover, and press down securely, that no juice may escape. Bake three-quarters of an hour, or a little less if the apples are very tender. No pie in which the apples are stewed beforehand can compare with this in flavor. If they are used, stew till tender, and strain. Sweeten and flavor to taste. Fill the pies, and bake half an hour.