PASTE FOR PUDDINGS AND PIES.
This is an article which, if the laws of health were obeyed, would be banished from every table, for it unites the three evils of animal fat, cooked animal fat, and heavy bread. Nothing in the whole range of cooking is more indigestible than rich pie crust, especially when, as bottom crust, it is made still worse, by being soaked, or slack baked. Still, as this work does not profess to leave out unhealthy dishes, but only to set forth an abundance of healthful ones, and the reasons for preferring them, the best directions will be given for making the best kinds of paste.
Healthful Pie Crusts.
Good crusts for plain pies are made by wetting up the crust with rich milk turned sour, and sweetened with saleratus. Still better crusts are made of sour cream sweetened with saleratus.
Mealy potatoes boiled in salted water, and mixed with the same quantity of flour, and wet with sour milk sweetened with saleratus, make a good crust.
Good light bread rolled thin, makes a good crust for pandowdy, or pan pie, and also for the upper crust of fruit pies, to be made without bottom crusts.
Paste made with Butter.
Very plain paste is made by taking a quarter of a pound of butter for every pound of flour. Still richer allows three quarters of a pound of butter to a pound of flour. Very rich paste has a pound of butter to a pound of flour.
Directions for making Paste.
Take a quarter of the butter to be used, rub it thoroughly into the flour, and wet it with cold water to a stiff paste.
Next dredge the board thick with flour, and cut up the remainder of the butter into thin slices, and lay them upon the flour, and dredge flour over thick, and then roll out the butter into thin sheets and lay it aside.
Then roll out the paste thin, cover it with a sheet of this rolled butter, dredge on more flour, fold it up, and roll it out, and then repeat the process till all the butter is used up.
Paste should be made as quick and as cold as possible. Some use a marble table in order to keep it cold. Roll from you every time.
Puff Paste.
Dissolve a bit of sal volatile, the size of a hickory-nut, in cold water. Take three quarters of a pound of butter for every quart of flour, and rub in one quarter of the butter, and wet it up with cold water, adding the salts when cool. Roll all the rest of the butter into sheets as directed above. Roll the paste three times, each time laying over it one-third of the butter sheets, and dredging on flour, as directed above. In rolling it, always roll from you, and not towards you.