Sweet dishes : a little treatise on confectionery and entremets sucrés / by "Wyvern".

  • Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert
Date:
1881
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sweet dishes : a little treatise on confectionery and entremets sucrés / by "Wyvern". Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    frequent use of iced water to cool the hands while working will contribute to the success of the undertaking. It is here essential to observe that a little practice will enable the cook to mix his dough, in the first instance with two strong wooden spoons, or with a wedgwood mortar pestle and one spoon. This I consider a matter of material consequence. Setting aside all hypercritical notions of cleanliness, it stands to reason that the less the paste is touched by the warm human hand the better and lighter it will prove. Similarly, therefore, let the turns in the rolling out stage be done with two spoons. If the mixing stage were carried out in a roomy enamelled iron pan or bowl set in ice, the spoon process could be easily managed. Pastry should be made, if possible, in the morning before the real heat of the day has set in. Fruit tarts are far nicer cold than hot, why not make them early then ? Or if you like them served hot, why not re-heat them in the oven at the time they are required ? For patties, bouchees, timbales, tartlets, cheesecakes, &c., this course is strongly to be advocated. The pastry cases ought to be made early, baked at once and put away; in the evening they should be filled with the jam, cheesecake mixture, or confiture, be re-heated in the oven, and sent to table. A most important feature in pastry is, of course, its baking. Too slack, or too fierce an oven, will destroy all the careful work I have just described. A good hot oven is required, suffici- ently brisk to raise the pastry, yet not severe enough to burn or even scorch it. Ramas^mi is inclined to err on the side of extreme heat, which, I think, accounts for those harsh, talc-like slabs of pale brown crust, piled up, one on top of the other, which so many of us are forced to accept as “ puff-paste.” The higher that these layers of talc have “done raise it uff,” the more successful does Ramasilmi consider himself. “ Erroneous vassal !”—Puff pastry, cannot be too white, or too volatile; so fragile indeed ought it to be that it should e’en crumble to atoms if stricken with a feather.