Category: Pastry

For those who have it off and for those who don’t! It’s awfully easy to forget about the real people behind these federal holidays (Washington, Columbus, our veterans both alive and dead). For those who might need a little primer to get in touch with the meaning of the day, and to get a sense for the sense for the moral clarity and iron resolve King possessed, you couldn’t do better than his Letter from Birmingham City Jail.

Excellent question, reader Bud. The answer is that dark corn syrup has some refiner’s syrup in it for extra flavor and some caramel color in it for extra, er….color. It’s a little sweeter and more complex than “light” corn syrup, a closer analogue to molasses which the good folks at Karo probably intended it to replace.

Chocolate. Yes you heard that right. Evidently it’s a new trend in the world of confectionery: gritty though not necessarily darker “Mexican style” chocolate bars. The story was in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday but I just came across it this morning. It’s here, but behind the WSJ paywall. Here are the lead paragraphs if you’re wondering what this is all about:

Craft chocolatiers are using ancient techniques of the Aztecs and Mayans to create a dairy-free, low-fat product with a consistency a bit like crunchy dirt. Some chocolate lovers can’t seem to get enough of it.

READ ON

Oh yes it definitely can, reader Tillie. Though pecan pie doesn’t give the appearance of a custard it definitely is one, and as such it abides by all the usual custard rules, number one being: don’t overcook me. For when you overcook a custard the long, string-like egg proteins which unfurl so beautifully in gentle heat begin to clench back up again. When that happens they wring the water out of the gel they’d just created, leaving behind curds and a large puddle of syrup. I think we’ve all had pecan pies like that, no? Clumpy and syrupy…in other words…blech.

Since we’re already talking syrup and molasses I should note that today is the 96th anniversary of the Great Boston Molasses Disaster, which happened on January 15, 1919. On that fateful day a two-and-a-half million gallon tank of molasses located at the Purity Distilling Company in the North End of Boston burst, sending a 25-foot wave of sticky death hurtling down Commercial Street at some 35 miles per hour. How molasses could reach that speed (and viscosity) in the middle of a January day I don’t know. But then it was a hell of a lot of molasses. The wave demolished buildings, train tracks and conveyances, killed 21 people and injured 159.

…when there are so many other types of syrup available to us these days? So asks reader Ted. And Ted, it’s a good question (even though I sense it’s loaded). When corn syrup was first produced commercially the point was to create a less expensive — and more neutral-tasting — alternative to molasses. Around the year 1900 most people used syrups, not more expensive crystal sugar, as general-purpose sweeteners. People up north used maple syrup. The Midwest favored sorghum. The rest of the population used molasses. In those days it was common to see a bowl of syrup on the kitchen table next to the salt and pepper, not a sugar bowl.

That’s a very interesting question, reader Ali. In fact Mrs. Pastry brought a big bag of fresh-picked pecans home with her when she went to Mexico around Halloween. We made a pie out of them and I have to say they did make a difference. Fresh as they were they had more flavor than any […]

That’s a very interesting question. I’ve received several opinions on the subject from readers since I posted my intention to make pecan pie, oh, way back in 2014. I confess I’m sympathetic to the no-syrup school to some extent, if only because the idea of a syrup-less pecan pie emits a strong odor of authenticity. I mean, people were making pecan pies before the invention of corn syrup, right?

Actually not really. It’s true that pecan pie was eaten in American prior to the heyday of corn syrup, mostly in and around Texas. However these recipes were qualitatively different than later, more popular pecan pies in that they were sweet egg-and-milk custards with pecans stirred in, usually topped with meringue. The first published recipe for such a pie appeared in Harper’s Bazaar in 1886.

Borne in 1846, Auguste Escoffier was one of the first chefs to have global name recognition. People traveled from everywhere to eat his food and to this day every serious student of cooking owns a copy of his cookbook, Le Guide Culinaire. But then a lot of chefs over the last century or so have cooked well, had broad name recognition and published cookbooks. So what made Escoffier a legend? Was his food that good? Could he have beaten Morimoto on Iron Chef?