Pastry.
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.