"Small sweet cakes eaten by the ancient Egyptians may well have included types using pastry. With their fine flour, oils, and honey they had the materials, and with their professional bakers they had the skills. In the plays of Aristophenes (5th century BC) there are mentions of sweetmeats including small pastries filled with fruit. Nothing is known of the actual pastry used, but the Greeks certainly recognized the trade of pastry-cook as distinct from that of baker. The Romans made a plain pastry of flour, oil, and water to cover meats and fowls which were baked, thus keeping in the juices. (The covering was not meant to be eaten; it filled the role of what was later called puff paste') A richer pastry, intended to be eaten, was used to make small pasties containing eggs or little birds which were among the minor items served at banquets....In Medieval Northern Europe the usual cooking fats were lard and butter, which--especially lard--were conducive to making stiff pastry and permitted development of the solid, upright case of the raised pie...No medieval cookery books give detailed instructions on how to make pastry; they assume the necessary knowledge...Not all Medieval pastry was coarse. Small tarts would be made with a rich pastry of fine white flour, butter, sugar, saffron, and other good things, certainly meant to be eaten. From the middle of the 16th century on, actual recipes for pastry begin to appear. ..The first recipe for something recognizable as puff pastry is in Dawson [The Good Housewife's Jewell, London]...1596."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 586-7).
"Greek pistores had mastered the art of giving their bread the most extravagant forms, shaping it like mushrooms, braids, crescents, and so on...thus illustrating in advance Careme's observation a thousand years later: "The fine arts are five in number, namely: painting, sculpture, poetry, music and architecture, the principal branch of the latter being pastry." And since it is not possible for us to discuss flour without dealing with cakes, the moment has come to pose the question of what pastry consisted of in antiquity, what it looked like and how it was made. The regrettable loss of the great Treatise on Baking, by Chrysippus of Tyranus, which included detailed reicpes for more than thirty cakes, each entirely different, leaves us somewhat short of information on this important subject. But various cross-checks (not to mention the consulation of Apicius) nonetheless give us a rather good idea of what the ancient Greeks and Romans confected in this domain...the makers of Greco-Roman pastry had no knowledge of the subleties of dough, and thus having nothing like our present-day babas, doughnuts, bioches, savarins, creampuffs, millefeuille pastry, pastry made from raised dough or shortbreads...as a general rule, Greek pastry closely resembled the sort that is still found today in North Africa, the Near East, and the Balkans: the basic mixture was honey, oil, and flour, plus various aromatic substances, notably pepper. The most frequent method of cooking was frying, but pastry was also cooked beneath coals. Other ingredients included pine nuts, walnuts, dates, almonds, and poppy seeds. This mixture was mainly baked in the form of thin round cakes and in the form doughnuts and fritters...Roman pastry does not appear to have included many innovations over and above what the Greeks had already invented."
---Culture and Cuisine: A Journey Through the History of Food, Jean-Francois Revel [Doubleday:Garden City] 1979 (p. 68-9)
Professional pastry guilds & chefs
The earliest reference we find for frozen pie crust, as a stand-alone consumer retail product, appears in the mid-1950s. In 1955, a process for making frozen pie crust (rolled) was patented. This item was packaged in roll from; not as ready-to-bake tinned shells. This USA patent. was filed by Billie Hamilton Armstrong [TN] on June 4, 1954 and published December 6, 1955.
Subsequent USA period ads do not describe frozen pie crusts. We have no way to know how the first frozen crusts were packaged: rolled & destined for homemaker's own pie pans or pre-shelled "ready to fill" in disposable tins. In 1963 newspapers across America heralded a "new" frozen pie crust sold in 9-inch tins; without referencing brand or company. The year before, two companies rolled out new frozen pie crust products. Both were marketed to consumers in super markets. Pet-Ritz is generally credited for introducing shelled frozen pie crust products to the American public. Oronoque Orchards [Stratford CT], a local farm stand famous for its pies, may have actually eclipsed Pet-Ritz by a couple of months. Pet-Ritz took marketed their product nationally; Oronoque Orchards remained local. By the mid-'60s, frozen pie shells were ubiquitous.
[1955]
"Pillsbury's Frozen Pie Crust, 2 pkgs., 35 cents."---Vidette-Messenger [Valparisio IN], February 15, 1955 (p. 16)
"Puncture-Free Pie Crust. Frozen pie crust has to be compounded carefully so as to resist tearing and puncturing between the time it is rolled and the time the housewife spreads it in the baking tin. Billie Hamilton Armstrong of Hohenwald, Tenn., has found a good proportion to be about two parts "soft" flour from summer-ripening wheat and one part "hard" flour from the winter vareity. She divides the batch into pats of about one pound each and then subdivides these into smaller bits, rolling them by hand to sheet form. This preliminary sheet is returned to pat form and rolled in a machine into pre-formed pie crusts about twelve to sixteen inches one-sixteenth of an inch thick. They got to the supermarket frozen, rolled in waxed paper and packed in light cardboard. Pie crusts prepared from dough made by her method, which is protected by Patent 2,726,156, "have uniformly superiour characteristics," Mrs. Hamilton says, "combining the essential factors for exceptional flakiness and delactable taste."
---"Patent on Lev Single-Cap Hatbox Brings Inquiry by Senate Group," Stacy V. Jones, New York Times, December 10, 1955 (p. 28)
[1956]
"King's 2 in Pkg. Frozen Pie Crust, 35 cents."
---Blytheville Courier News [AR], December 13, 1956 (p. 20)
[1957]
"Pet-Ritz Fruit Pies, frozen, ready to bake. Now you can bake your family a real fruit-country pie--a Pet-Ritz Pie with juicy, sun-sweet fruit heaped high in a delicately tender crust, fir shiw golden butter! This very day, see why so many people say no pies compare with Pet-Ritz Apple, cherry, peach...6 delicious fruit or berry favorites...made the traditional fruit-country way, baked by you the new easy way!. Pet-Ritz brings the country's best to you."
---display ad, Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1957 (p. A6)
[NOTE: these pies were complete, no indication crust were also sold separately.]
[1958]
"Frozen Pie Crust, pgk. 29 cents."
---Panola Watchman [Carthage TX], November 20, 1958 (p. 44)
[1961]
"You! Enjoy the revolutionary new frozen product! Oronoque Frozen Pie crust 69 cents, 2-crust-3 pie pans. Victory [supermarket] will supply free of charge...your choice of any two Jell-O pie fillings."
---Fitchburg Sentinel [MA], December 6, 1961 (p. 34)
[1962]
"Pet-Ritz Frozen Pie Crusts and are introduced by Pet Milk, which has created an entirely new product category."
---The Food Chronology, James Trager [Henry Holt:New York] 1997 (p. 570)
About Pet-Ritz:
"Pet-Ritz Pie Co. was started by the Petritz family. The family originally operated a roadside stand, selling cherry pies to Michigan tourists. The success of the tourist business prompted the family to freeze pies and sell them. With the advent of modern mass production and freezing capabilities, Pet-Ritz Fruit Pies became one of the midwest's leading brands of frozen fruit pies...Because of consumer acceptance of frozen convenience products in the early 1960s, the Frozen Foods Division expanded into other product areas. One frozen product that has been very successful is Pet-Ritz Pie Crust Shells. Pet's expertize in making pie crust for fruit pies made pie crust shells a natural line extension."
---"Petritz family treats now shared by millions," Los Angeles Times, October 16, 1980 (p. S8)
"Betty Winton says: Now You Can Make Perfect Pies No Foolin---No Failin' with Oronoque Orchards Frozen Pie Crusts. They're perfct when you buy them. They're perfect when you make them. At King Cole, Smirnoff's and other fine super markets."
---Bridgeport Post [CT], March 5, 1962 (p. 20)
[1963]
"New-Frozen Crusts. Easy as pie, the newest in pie crusts. There are frozen pie crust shells, each the 9-inch size, packed in foil pans, all rolled and ready for a favorite filling. Tins serve as the baking pans."
---Redlands Daily Facts [CA], January 8, 1963 (p. 8)
"Pet-Ritz...Frozen Pie Crust Shells, pkg of 2, 39 cents."
---Daily News, Huntingdon and Mount Union [PA], January 23, 1963 (p. 12)
[1965]
"Pillsbury Frozen Pie Crusts, pkg of two 9 inch shells, 29 cents."
---display ad, Los Angeles Times, December 20, 1965 (p. E18) <
In England, puff paste was a natural iteration of short paste. Compare these recipes:
[1596] "To make butter paste
Take flour and seven or eight eggs, and cold butter and fair water, or rose water, and spices (if you will) and make your paste. Beat it on a board, and when you have so done divide it into two or three parts and drive out the piece with a rolling pin. And do['t] with butter one piece by another, and fold up your paste upon the butter and drive it out again. And so do five or six times together, and some not cut for bearings. Put them into the over, and when they be baked scrape sugar on them and serve them."
---The Good Housewife's Jewel, Thomas Dawson, with an introduction by Maggie Black [Southover Press:East Sussex] 1996 (p. 71)[1615-1660] "Of puff paste.
Now for the making of puff paste of the best kind, you shall take the finest wheat flour after it hath been a little baked in a pot in the oven, and blend it well with eggs, whites and yolks all together, after the paste is well kneaded, roll out a part thereof as thin as you please, and then spread cold sweet butter over the same, then upon the same butter roll another leaf of the paste as before; and spread it with butter also; and thus roll leaf upon leaf with butter between till it be as thick as you think good: and with it either cover any baked meat, or make paste for venison, Florentine, tart of what dish else you please and so bake it. There be some that to this paste use sugar, but it is certain it will hinder the rising thereof; and therefore when your puffed paste is baked, you shall dissolved sugar into rose-water, and drop it into the paste as much as it will by any means receive, and then set it a little while in the oven after and it will be sweet enough."
---The English Hous-wife, Gervase Markham, [W.Wilson:London] 1660 (p. 74) [NOTE: facsimile 1615 edition of this book edited by Michael R. Best [McGill-Queen's University Press:Montreal] 1998 contains this recipe (p. 98) and others. Your librarian can help you obtain a copy.]
Pie crust
In its most basic definition, pie crust is a simple mix of flour and water. The addition of fat makes it pastry. In all times and places, the grade of the ingredients depends upon the economic status of the cook. Apicius [1st Century AD] makes reference to a simple recipe for crust (see below). Medieval cooking texts typically instruct the cook to lay his fruit or meat in a "coffin," no recipe provided. Up through Medieval times, pie crust was often used as a cooking receptacle. It was vented with holes and sometimes marked to distinguish the baker/owner. Whether or not the crust was consumed or discarded is debated by food historians. Some hypothesize the crust would have been rendered inedible due to extreme thickness and baking time. Others observe flour, and by association flour-based products, was expensive and would not have been thrown away. Possibly? Pies baked in grand Medieval houses served two classes: the wealthy at the contents and the crust was given to the servants or poor.
"Pies and tarts...In the Middle Ages, these sweet and savory preparations baked in a crust were the specialty of patissiers--who had no other functions...We know that medieval cooks did not always have ovens, and they worked with patissiers, to whom they sometimes brought fillings of their own making for the patissier to place in a crust and bake. This explains why cookbooks intended for professional chefs were nearly silent about the ingredients of these pastry wrappings, but spoke only about consistency an thickness, and about the most suitable shapes...Still, medieval cooks might take a chance and cook a simple pie or tart on their own by placing it in a shallow pan, covered with a lid and surrounded by live embers, whose progress they had to monitor very closely...In effect, the pastry because an oven, ensuring moderate heat thanks to its insulating properties...So could it be that these pastry coverings were not necessarily eaten once they had done their job of containing and protecting the fillings?"
---The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, Odile Redon et al, [University of Chicago Press:Chicago] 1998 (p. 133-4)Renaissance patissiers began experimenting with lighter, more malleable doughs. Recipes for short paste ("short" in this case means butter) and puff paste enter cookbooks at this time. 17th century English cook books and reveal several recipes for pie crust and puff paste, all of varying thickness, taste and purpose. Robert May's The Accomplisht Cook [1685] listed fourteen separate recipes for paste (pastry/pie crust/puff paste). American cook books (The Virginia Housewife, Mary Randoph [1828] & Directions for Cookery in its Various Branches, Miss Leslie [1849]) contain instructions for making pies with puff paste, sometimes decorating them with cut out pieces of this same paste. Mrs. Randolph's recipe for pumpkin pudding (pumpkin pie) states "put a paste around the edges and in the bottom of a shallow dish or plate, pour in the mixture, cut some thin bits of paste, twist them and lay them across the top and bake it nicely." (University of South Carolina Press:Columbia] 1984 ( p. 154). Mrs. Porter's New Southern Cookery Book [1879] reads: "Cranberry tart...line your plates with thin puff-paste, fill, lay strips of rich puff-paste across the top and bake in a moderate oven." (p. 299). There is no illustration to show us exactly how these strips looked.
In addition to being efficient cooking receptacles, covered pies promoted preservation:
"The idea of the covered pie. The modern biscuit is a descendant of the barley bannock and the oatcake which have come down to us from the beginning of civilization. It is a method of presering simply by reducing the water content of baked dough to such a degree that the product is not likely to be affected by mould; this is done, with the biscuit, in such a manner as to make chewing easy. The biscuit is thus the result of a successful fight against the dangers threatening normally fermented baked goods, mould, and staleness. The basic idea of the covered pie is a similar one. The covered pie is of very old standing in the British Isles, probably of longer standing than the modern biscuit. It has as a basis a similar dough to the biscuit, finely rolled out so that it can be thoroughly baked like a crust, but not caramelized like a bread-crust. Such a crust, especially when some fat has been added to the dough, is likely to withstand the influence of liquids and semi-liquids without becoming a sticky mess. If it is given an open pie-dish form, it can be used for filling with semi-liquids like minced meat or fruit, the whole thing is protected by the outer layer of the crust against certain contaminates and can be kept for quite a long time."
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