Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery

by Marion Harland

Puff-Paste.

• 1 pint flour.
• ½ lb. butter.
• 1 egg, well beaten. Use the yolk only.
• 1 gill ice-water.

Mix the flour, a tablespoonful of butter, the beaten egg and ice-water into a paste with a wooden spoon. Flour your pastry-board, and roll out the crust very thin. Put the rest of the butter, when you have washed it, in the centre of this sheet, in a flat cake. Turn the four corners of the paste over it, and roll out carefully, not to break the paste. Should it give way, flour the spot, that it may not stick to the roller. When very thin, sprinkle lightly with flour, fold up, and roll out four times more. Set in a cool place for an hour, roll out again, and cut into tartlet-shells or top crust for pies.

The bottom crust of pies may often be made of plainer pastry than the upper.

Transparent Crust. (Very rich.)

• 1 lb. flour.
• 1 lb. butter.
• 1 egg—the yolk only.

Wash the butter, dry, and then melt it in a vessel set in another of boiling water, stirring gently all the while to prevent oiling. Take off the salty scum from the top, and when almost cold beat up the butter little by little with the egg, which should be previously whipped light. When these are thoroughly incorporated, work in the flour, roll out twice, sprinkling lightly with flour before you fold it up; let it stand folded five minutes in a cold place, and make out for tartlets or pâtés. It is not suitable for large pies. Bake before you fill them, and brush over with a beaten egg while hot.

Mince Pies (No. 1.)

• 4 lbs. meat—i. e., two-thirds apple, one-third meat.
• 3 lbs. raisins, seeded and chopped.
• 2 lbs. currants, washed, picked over, and dried.
• 3 quarts cider.
• 1 pint brandy.
• 1 heaping teaspoonful cinnamon.
• 1 heaping teaspoonful nutmeg.
• The same of cloves, and half the quantity of mace.
• Make very sweet with brown sugar.

The meat should be a good piece of lean beef, boiled the day before it is needed. Half a pound of raw suet, chopped fine, may be added. Chop the meat, clean out bits of skin and gristle, and mix with twice the quantity of fine juicy apples, also chopped; then put in the fruit, next the sugar and spice, lastly the liquor. Mix very thoroughly, cover closely, and let all stand together for twenty-four hours before making the pies.

Mince Pies (No. 2.) ✠

• 2 lbs. lean fresh beef, boiled, and when cold, chopped fine.
• 1 lb. beef-suet, cleared of strings and minced to powder.
• 5 lbs. apples, pared and chopped.
• 2 lbs. raisins, seeded and chopped.
• 1 lb. sultana raisins, washed and picked over.
• 2 lbs. currants, washed and carefully picked over.
• ¾ lb. citron, cut up fine.
• 2 tablespoonfuls cinnamon.
• 1 teaspoonful powdered nutmeg.
• 2 tablespoonfuls mace.
• 1 tablespoonful cloves.
• 1 tablespoonful allspice.
• 1 tablespoonful fine salt.
• 2½ lbs. brown sugar.
• 1 quart brown Sherry.
• 1 pint best brandy.

Mince-meat made by this receipt will keep all winter in a cool place. Keep in stone jars, tied over with double covers. Add a little more liquor (if it should dry out), when you make up a batch of pies. Let the mixture stand at least twenty-four hours after it is made before it is used.

Lay strips of pastry, notched with a jagging-iron, in a cross-bar pattern, upon the pie, instead of a top-crust.

I take this opportunity of warning the innocent reader against placing any confidence whatever in dried currants. I years ago gave over trying to guess who put the dirt in them. It is always there! Gravel-stones lurking under a specious coating of curranty-looking paste, to crucify grown people’s nerves and children’s teeth; mould that changes to mud in the mouth; twigs that prick the throat, not to mention the legs, wings, and bodies of tropical insects—a curious study to one interested in the entomology of Zante. It is all dirt! although sold to us at currant prices.

Wash your currants, therefore, first in warm water, rolling up your sleeves, and rubbing the conglomerate masses apart, as you would scrub a muddy garment. Drain them in a cullender, and pass them through three more waters—cold now, but cleansing. Then spread them upon a large dish, and enter seriously upon your geological and entomological researches. “Sultanas”—sweet and seedless—are nearly as troublesome, but their specialty is more harmless, being stickiness and stems.

Nevertheless, since John has a weakness for mince-pies (I never saw an un-dyspeptic man who had not), it is worth your while to make them, having this consolation, that if you are wise you need not engage in the manufacture oftener than once, or at most, twice a winter. But let the children taste them sparingly, and never at night, if you value their health and your own sound slumbers.