it very thin with the rolling-pin.  Lay it on the paste, sprinkle with flour, and fold over the edges.  Press it in somewhat with the rolling-pin, and roll out again.  Always roll from you.  Do this again and again till the butter is all used, rolling up the paste after the last cake is in, and then putting it on the ice for an hour or more.  Have filling all ready, and let the paste be as nearly ice-cold as possible when it goes into the oven.  There are much more elaborate rules; but this insures handsome paste.  Make a plainer one for the bottom crusts.  Cover puff paste with a damp cloth, and it may be kept on the ice a day or two before baking.

PATTIES FROM PUFF PASTE.

Roll the paste about a third of an inch thick, and cut out with a round or oval cutter about two inches in diameter.  Take a cutter half an inch smaller, and press it into the piece already cut out, so as to sink half-way through the crust:  this to mark out the top piece.  Lay on tins, and bake to a delicate brown.  They should treble in thickness by rising, and require from twenty minutes to half an hour to bake.  When done, the marked-out top can easily be removed.  Take out the soft inside, and fill with sweetmeats for dessert, or with minced chicken or oysters prepared as on p. 140.

GRANDMOTHER’S APPLE PIE.

Line a deep pie-plate with plain paste.  Pare sour apples,—­greenings are best; quarter, and cut in thin slices.  Allow one cup of sugar, and quarter of a grated nutmeg mixed with it.  Fill the pie-plate heaping full of the sliced apple, sprinkling the sugar between the layers.  It will require not less than six good-sized apples.  Wet the edges of the pie with cold water; lay on the cover, and press down securely, that no juice may escape.  Bake three-quarters of an hour, or a little less if the apples are very tender.  No pie in which the apples are stewed beforehand can compare with this in flavor.  If they are used, stew till tender, and strain.  Sweeten and flavor to taste.  Fill the pies, and bake half an hour.

DRIED-APPLE PIES.

Wash one pint of dried apples, and put in a porcelain kettle with two quarts of warm water.  Let them stand all night.  In the morning put on the fire, and stew slowly for an hour.  Then add one pint of sugar, a teaspoonful of dried lemon or orange rind, or half a fresh lemon sliced, and half a teaspoonful of cinnamon.  Stew half an hour longer, and then use for filling the pies.  The apple can be strained if preferred, and a teaspoonful of butter added.  This quantity will make two pies.  Dried peaches are treated in the same way.

LEMON PIES.

Three lemons, juice of all and the grated rind of two; two cups of sugar; three cups of boiling water; three tablespoonfuls of corn-starch dissolved in a little cold water; three eggs; a piece of butter the size of an egg.