Pie-Crust

Ingredients

• one pound of well-dried and sifted flour
• a quarter of a pound of cold clarified suet
• a tea-spoonful of salt
• iced water as will bind it thoroughly

Method

1. 1

   Put flour on the slab, make a hollow, and work in the suet and salt.

2. 2

   Add iced water to bind, roll out to half an inch thick, dot with more suet, fold, roll thin, and chill.

3. 3

   Give three more turns and roll out again to cover the pie.

Nutrition per serving

As published

This recipe was extracted from Culinary jottings (1885) by A. R. Kenney-Herbert, page 149. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

pie-crust. As I said before, the water used in pastry-making should certainly be slightly iced : it need not be as cold as that we like to drink, but it should be decidedly cold to the touch. For PUFF PASTE the following directions may, I think, be depended upon : — Having the following ingredients ready : — a bowl of cold, well clarified suet, some dry well-sifted flour, a good ripe lime, some salt, and a jug of iced water, proceed as follows : — weigh a pound of flour, and turn it out upon your cold marble slab, make a hollow in its centre, and fill it with half an ounce of salt, and a quarter of a pint of the cold water ; mix the flour gradually with the water, 264 CULINARY JOTTINGS FOR MADRAS. and when this is done, and the paste half mixed, sprinkle over it another quarter pint of water in which the lime has been squeezed. Mix it all now thoroughly, until it ceases to adhere to the slab, and pat it into a round ball. Now take one pound weight of the clarified suet, cut it up into dice, and flatten out the ball of paste to a thick- ness of about two inches, spreading the suet evenly over its surface ; then fold the four sides of the paste to the centre enclosing the suet, and forming a square piece. Roll this evenly out a yard long, then fold over one-third of the length towards the centre, and fold the other third over it. This folding in three is called by cooks " giving the paste one tui^n." Be careful that none of the suet breaks through the edges of the paste as you roll it out. Having folded up the paste, let it rest for ten minutes in the ice-box, or on a very cold slab. Then give it two turns, rest ten minutes, then two turns more, — five rolls out in all, — lastly, gather the paste into a lump, and roll it according to your requirements. For patties, vols-au-veiif, ^'c, seven turns are recom- mended by some authors. Keep the flour dredger at your elbow, and flour the rolling-pin well before each turn. The sooner the paste is used when it has been completed the better. If you have a little good iced butter, you may alter the above proportions as follows : — three-quarters of a pound of suet, and one-quarter of a pound of butter. The yolks of two eggs well beaten and strained may be mixed with the water. Baking powder may be used advantageously in pastry- making : here is Yeatman & Co.'s recipe for puff paste made in connection with their powder : — Measure three breakfast-cupfuls of flour, carefully sifted, and two cupfuls of butter. Choose a cool place to work PASTRY-MAKING, ET CETERA. 265 in, see that the flour is good and dry, the butter firm and free from moisture, and fill two shallow baking-tins with broken ice. Put the flour on a cool sla,b, mixing into it a heaped up tea-spoonful of the baking powder ; when mixed, form the flour in a, ring, as it were, and in the centre throw the yolk of an egg and a tea-spoonful of salt ; add a little iced water, and gradually work the flour into it from the inside of the ring, sprinkling additional water as you require it — about one breakfast- cupful altogether — until you have a smooth, fine dough, free from all sticki- ness. Pat this into a lump, and put it in the ice-box for a quarter of an hour, then roll it out about the size of a dinner plate : put the butter upon it, and wrap the edges of the dough over it, carefiilly covering it : now turn it upside down, and roll it out very thin ; reverse it again, and fold it in three. Place it after this on a baking-sheet over one of the pans of broken ice, and put the other pan of ice iipon it. Repeat this cooling process between each double turn, and use as soon as possible when five turns have been completed. Although composed for English and American kitchens, observe the use of ice advocated in this receipt. Instead of the butter I would try the clarified beef suet, that is to say, if I were unable to procure butter of undeniable quality, firm, cold, and quite free from water. The next description of pastry that demands our atten- tion is that which should be used for savoury pies, to ^it : — PIE -CRUST. In this, I think, Ramasamy needs care- ful instruction. He makes no difference between his sa- voury pie " suet-crust," and that which he sends up under the name of a vol-au-vent. His chief aim being a pie- covering, raised an inch and a half or two inches high, composed of the harsh, talc-like layers to which I have already alluded. I need hardly point out that this is an entirely erroneous impression. Think of the cold pigeon- 266 CULINARY JOTTINGS FOR MADRAS. pie at home, and you will remember no 'puff pastry : your mind's eye will rather picture a close crust about half, or three-quarters of an inch thick, glazed externally, with c^gt and with the feet of the birds peeping' invitingly from the centre : a firm plain paste that you cut out in a whole piece without its breaking into fragments ; pale brown and crusty externally, and soft and white internally, with bits of jelly adhering to it. Well, that is the kind of crust that I am so anxious to impart to Ramasamy, for which the following recipe is, I think, reliable : — Put one pound of well-dried and sifted flour on the slab, or in an enamelled basin ; make a hollow in the centre, and work into it a quarter of a pound of cold clarified suet cut into pieces, adding a tea-spoonful of salt. When mix- ed, sprinkle over it as much iced water as will bind it thoroughly

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.