Skip to main content
Dessert

Suet Pastry, Common

A simple pastry dough made with flour, suet, water, salt, and optional baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Suet Pastry, Common

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  2. Rub the suet into the flour until well mixed.

Make the paste

  1. Make a hole in the center and pour in the water.

  2. Stir lightly with a knife, adding more water if needed.

  3. Work the mixture into a stiff paste.

  4. Roll out the paste two or three times and let it rest for a few minutes before using.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the paste, binding it together as it is worked.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pastry tender and rich by coating the flour particles.
Water
Hydrates the flour so the mixture gathers into a dough.

The step that matters

Adding the water. Water should be added gradually and stirred lightly. Too much water makes the paste sticky and tough, because wet flour develops gluten quickly when worked. Adding it slowly lets you stop once the mixture just holds together.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes