Pastry in America

Among the first published pastry recipes to reach the colonies were those in Hannah Glasse’s influential The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy (London, 1747; Alexandria, Virginia, 1805). Her pastries included puddings baked or boiled in crusts, and pies with sweet or savory fillings. The single-crust puddings actually are akin to custard-filled tarts; this “pudding” nomenclature endured through the nineteenth century in English-influenced American kitchens. Many of Mrs. Glasse’s savory pies reveal medieval roots: the upper crusts were removed during baking; gravy, wine, vinegar, or butter was poured in; and the crusts replaced, to be removed at table so the diner could exhume tidbits of venison, goose, oysters, or other savories from the pastry “coffins.” These standing pies largely disappeared in nineteenth-century America, although sturdy paste lingers in a few enclaves. In the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, descendants of emigrants from England’s Cornwall continue to bake Cornish pasties, meat turnovers notorious for durable crusts that enabled miners to tote them into shafts. Pâté en croûte, a medieval holdover in which finely ground and seasoned meats are baked in dense paste and sealed with fat or gelatin under the top crust, is a classic preparation in gourmet shops and French restaurants.