Use butter, or lard, or very finely chopped suet. If you can get good lard it makes nice pastry; by that I mean lard which has a very little water in it. A good deal of the lard that you buy in the stores has a large proportion of water in it, and I believe in these days it is apt to be sophisticated with several articles which are not exactly lard, so that home-made lard is decidedly the best; that which you try out yourself. First take the butter, or whatever shortening you use,—butter, lard, or suet,—and mix it with twice the quantity of flour. For instance, if you are going to use a pound of flour allow half a pound of shortening. Take half the shortening and mix it with the flour, using a knife. Then wet the mixed flour and butter with just enough cold water to form a paste which you can roll out. If you mix with a knife or spoon you avoid heating the pastry. After the flour and the first half of the shortening have been mixed to a paste roll it out, about half an inch thick, and put the rest of the shortening in flakes on it. One of the ladies asks about putting flour on the pastry board: Extra flour, of course, besides the quantity that you put in the pastry. The only object in washing the butter is to get out any buttermilk that there may be in it. After putting the butter—the second half of the butter—over the pastry in rather large pieces, put just a little flour over it, fold the pastry in such a way that the edge is turned up all round to inclose the butter; that is about an inch and a half all round. Fold the pastry together thin, and roll it out, and fold it several times. Remember that the oftener you fold it and roll it the more flakes you will have in the cooked pastry. Take care to use flour enough to keep it from sticking to the board or the roller. You will remember the pastry is not salted and unless the shortening has enough salt in it to salt the flour, you must add it. Good lard makes a more tender pastry than butter.
Question. Do you ever mix them?
Miss Corson. Yes, you can mix them if you like, using part lard and part butter. To roll out the pastry, roll it in a rather long strip, that is, a strip about three times as long as it is wide. That enables you then to fold it and keep it in a nice shape. It does not make any difference whether you roll it from you or towards you. As many times as you roll and fold it you give it three additional layers. Now I might keep on rolling and folding indefinitely, and I simply should make the pastry have more layers than this has, but I think you thoroughly understand that, so that I will roll it out, and make our dumplings now. Only remember that the more times you roll it the more folds you make, the more layers you have in the pastry. Keep it as cool as possible all the time. If you roll and fold it three times remember that you have nine layers of butter and pastry. You can roll it out more than that if you want to. Puff paste, which is rolled and folded in this way, has what is called nine turns. Rolling and folding it three times makes a turn. The object of using marble or stone pastry slabs is to keep the pastry cool. If you make more pastry than you want to use, wrap it in a floured towel and put it in a very cool place; then when you are ready to use it roll and fold it two or three times, and it will be very much better than when first made. I am going to roll up a strip of the pastry that I cut off the edge in such a way that you will see how the layers are formed, and you can pass it about. One of the ladies has asked me about heating the flour. It is not necessary to heat the flour for pastry, on the contrary, it would rather tend to spoil it. You want to keep it as cool as possible. But in the winter when you are going to make bread, if you heat the flour it facilitates the rising of the bread; there you need the heat.
BAKED APPLE DUMPLINGS.
For apple dumplings, after the pastry is made, cut it in pieces about four inches square and about a quarter of an inch thick. One of the ladies asks about sifting the flour. That is necessary, always. For apple dumplings, peel the apples and take out the cores, leaving the apples as whole as possible. The corer that I have here is nothing but a round tin cylinder. Use any apple corer that will take the core out without breaking the apple. For this purpose Greening apples are the nicest. These are table apples. Put an apple on each piece of pastry. In the core of the apple put as much sugar as it will hold, and a very small pinch of powdered cinnamon—about a quarter of a saltspoonful of powdered cinnamon, or any powdered spice you prefer. Then fold the corners of the square pieces of pastry up over the apple so that they will lap over on the top of the apple. Fasten the corners by moistening them a little with cold water. After the dumplings are all made, brush them over the top with water, or with melted butter, or with egg, beaten; the entire egg, or if you have the white or the yolk, you can beat that up; of course if you use just the yolk you make them a little yellower. If you use the yolk of an egg, beat it with a little water. Ladies are asking me about that little rolling pin. It is like that little knife, it is bewitched, but the magic consists simply in keeping the rolling pin perfectly smooth, and the knife sharp. That is made of hard wood, and is polished so that it is perfectly smooth, and of course I keep it so by not having it soaked in water. Instead of putting water and soap on to clean it, it simply will be wiped with a wet cloth, and then with a dry one. The thousand dents it has in it it has got by travel; it has been knocked around in my traveling trunk for the last five years. The dents did not get in it by using it. It may be made of any hard wood. One of the ladies asks me why I leave the corners of the dumpling open. I could pat the crust around and bring it right up close to the apple, but it would not be so light in the first place. The crust will hold together, it will not break apart in baking, and you leave the ends nice and light; and it makes a nicer-looking dumpling. The idea seems to be that if I should close up the corners the juice of the apples would stay in. It won’t boil out much, anyway.
Now, ladies, I am going to take a little of the soup stock that we made yesterday out in a cup and pass it, so you can see what it looks like before it is clarified. That is the soup stock or broth that we made yesterday. You will remember where your recipe ended yesterday, about the soup stock being poured into a bowl and allowed to cool. That is the condition in which the stock is now. After a little, I am going to tell you about the clarifying of it, but now I want to finish telling you about dumplings, so you will have all your dumpling recipes in one place.
The question was asked, I believe, about the temperature of the oven. About the same as for the fish—a moderate oven, so you can put your hand in and count, say fifteen, quickly. It takes from half an hour to three-quarters to bake the dumplings. Be careful not to brown them. If the pastry seems to be browning before the apples get done,—and something will depend upon the kind of apples you use,—cover the pastry with a buttered paper. The object of the egg on the dumplings is to make them a little glossy. Use either butter, or egg, or water for brushing over the tops.
STEAMED APPLE DUMPLINGS.
For steamed dumplings usually a suet crust is used. You could use this crust if you wanted to, but it would not be sure to be light. It might possibly absorb a little of the steam. For suet crust you would use half a pound of suet chopped very fine, a teaspoonful of salt and a pound of flour. Mix carefully the flour and suet and salt with enough cold water to make a pastry just soft enough to roll out. Roll it out about a quarter of an inch thick, and then cut it in little squares; prepare the apples just as I prepare them for the baked dumpling; instead of folding the crust up and leaving the corners open, pat it with your hands so that you entirely inclose the apple. Just roll the pastry out once and then inclose the apples in it, and put the dumpling into the steamer; that is, an ordinary tin steamer; set over a pot of boiling water and steam the dumplings until they are done. You must decide that by running a trussing needle or knitting needle through the pastry into the apple. It may take an hour and a half to steam the dumplings; be sure they are done.
For another kind of pastry that has been described to me by enthusiastic gentlemen who used to have mothers, a kind of pastry “that melted in your mouth;” it is very easy to make that; not a flaky pastry, but a soft, exceedingly tender pastry that really crumbles. To do that you simply rub all of the shortening into the flour. Half a pound of shortening and a pound of flour; put the shortening into the flour with the salt; rub them with your hands till you have the shortening thoroughly mixed with the flour. It looks like meal; the ingredients must be thoroughly mixed, but not melted together; then use just enough cold water to make the pastry, and roll it out just once, and use it; be sure to keep it cool.