[Sca-cooks] porter cake

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Jessica Tiffin:
>Rubbing in the fat is what you do for pastry-making: start with a 
>bowl of flour, with whatever spices mixed in, add the chilled fat 
>cut into little bits, and have at it with your fingertips, rubbing 
>the fat and flour together until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

This is the technique Americans associate with "mealy" pie pastry (as 
opposed to flaky, in which the lumps of fat are larger and, when the 
pastry is rolled out, turn into laminated flakes). Mealy pie dough is 
used for things like pot [approximately, cottage] pies or custard 
pies, which have a high liquid component, and are supposed to be less 
susceptible to sogginess and puncturing. I expect that in the UK and 
cultural offshoots a hot-water pastry would be the preferred method 
for at least some of this stuff.

>   It actually gives you quite a different effect to creaming the fat 
>and mixing in the flour, somehow.

If the fat is butter (which usually contains at least some water), 
rubbing it into the flour may be more likely to build gluten than by 
creaming it and mixing, resulting in a tougher pastry. There's also a 
difference somehow related to the emulsifying properties of creamed 
fats. My own experience has been that rubbing in can give you a 
denser product, more simply shortened, with a slightly oily texture, 
than by creaming, which aerates the finished product and tends to 
create a less greasy mouth feel. Or, it may all come down to a simple 
difference in the extent to which the fat and the flour are mixed.

>  Is "rubbing in" not a standard term in American cookery?  it's one 
>of the basics in my Brit-influenced habits...

I'd say it's known, but not as commonly used. As I mentioned 
recently, Americans seem not to use this for cakes; so much so in 
fact that many people essentially don't recognize anything outside 
the cream cake genre (starting with butter and sugar creamed 
together, adding eggs and dry ingredients --usually flour sifted with 
baking powder-- alternately)  as a cake. Egg sponges of various kinds 
get special dispensation, but ordinarily, when you say "cake", 
unqualified, you mean a cream cake.

Adamantius