Professional cooks use butter for pastry. Puff paste should never be
attempted with lard or a half mixture of it. If lard or clarified beef
suet is used, the pastry of an indifferent cook will be improved by
adding a little baking-powder to the flour and rolling the paste very
thin.
It is not difficult to make puff paste. In winter, when it is freezing
outdoors, or in summer, when a refrigerator with ice in it is at hand,
it is very little more trouble to make puff paste than any other kind.
The simple rolling of the dough to form layers requires very little
practice. The only secret left, after using cold water and butter cold
enough not to penetrate the dough, is to have it almost at a
freezing-point, or at least thoroughly chilled, as it is put into a hot
oven.
The _vols-au-vent_ of strawberries, or berries of any kind, or of
jellies, or of lemon paste (see page 244), and also _rissoles_, are
especially fine, and are quickly made.
As hundreds of different dishes can be made with pastry, and as Carême
has devoted a good-sized volume to the subject, I will copy his receipt
for puff paste. It is not modest, perhaps, to put my own first; but it
is for the benefit of more ordinary cooks, who will never take extra
trouble to make a thing perfect.