Take some puff-paste (see Paste, Puff), and roll it out to the thickness of half an inch, or rather less. Get two circular tin cutters, one three inches in diameter and the other two inches. Cut with the largest cutter some circular pieces of paste. It is best to clip the cutter into water first. Be sure and cut sharply and smoothly. The round pieces of paste must have sharp edges, like a large, flat pill-box, and not round ones, like a cheese. Next take the smaller cutter, and make a slight incision, not quite an eighth of an inch deep, in the top of each piece of puff-paste, making a small cut in each piece, surrounded by a rim half an inch wide. This is simply a round cut; no paste is removed. Place the pieces of paste in a brisk oven, and bake. (See No. 4.) The paste, if good, will rise to the height of three inches. Each piece will have a lid on the top two inches in diameter. This must be lifted gently off when nearly cold. The white paste inside the patty must be carefully scooped out, and the lid can be replaced when the patty case has been filled.

This shape will be found far preferable to the old-fashioned one of the rings of pastry of different sizes, surmounted by a round uneatable knob.

In filling the cases, always remember to make the forcemeat thoroughly hot first, and to put this hot forcemeat into the cold case; then the patties can be made hot in the oven quickly. Were the patties filled with cold forcemeat first, and then made hot, the result would be that the pastry would be dried up and spoilt before the insides got hot through.

Sometimes, when patties are ordered from the pastrycook's, the cook warms them up just as they are. In this case, you will often find the pastry hot, while the "wafer of anchovy something" is quite cold.

Should any filled patties be left, and you should want to warm them up for the next day, lift off the tops, and scoop out the inside. Make this inside hot - say, in a saucer in the oven - put the cases, moist, inside the oven for two or three minutes, then fill up with the hot forcemeat, and place on the puff-paste lids.