Series: Pie Rules based on a November 14, 1928 New York Amsterdam News article.
Boiling Point
Lillian Sharpe Hunter’s second crust runs the first backward. The cook beats fat with boiling water until it thickens like honey, then chills the dough for an hour. The result came out compact yet very short, a baker’s word for tender and crumbly. That method required an ice box, time, and a kitchen of one’s own, none guaranteed in crowded Harlem flats. In 1926, Zora Neale Hurston told her patron Annie Nathan Meyer she could not bake a promised cake because her landlady needed the kitchen. Gastro-politics tells us that whoever controls the stove shapes the menu. Two methods gave readers a choice fitted to the space they had.
[Side Bar]
This crust depends on an ice box, an appliance many Harlem tenants shared or lacked.
Hot Water Pastry Recipe
Ingredients
6 tablespoons fat
4 tablespoons boiling water
1½ cups pastry flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
Directions
Add the boiling water to the fat. Beat with a spoon until the mixture reaches the consistency of honey, about fifteen to twenty minutes. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt, and add to the water and fat mixture. Mix well and set in the ice box to harden for one hour. Do not handle the pastry until it is chilled.
Lillian Sharpe Hunter, “Housewives Exchange: Holiday Plea,” New York Amsterdam News, November 14, 1928, 5.
Who controls the kitchen where you cook? In our next post, Hunter turned to the filling.