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Dessert

Plain Pastry

A simple pastry dough made with flour, salt, lard, ice water, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Pastry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour and salt together.

  2. Cut in the lard with a knife or rub it in with your fingers.

  3. Add just enough ice water to hold the mixture together, a few drops at a time.

Laminate with butter

  1. Flour the board well and roll out the pastry lightly.

  2. Cover with 1 tablespoon of butter cut into small pieces and sprinkle a little flour over it.

  3. Fold the sides to nearly meet in the center, then fold the ends over to form a square.

  4. Pat and roll out again, adding the other tablespoon of butter and repeating the folding process.

  5. Roll and fold once more, making three folds in total.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Lard
Coats flour particles so the dough stays tender and flaky.
Butter
Adds flavor and creates layers that puff into flakiness when baked.
Ice water
Hydrates the flour just enough to bind the dough without making it tough.

The step that matters

Adding the ice water. Adding too much water or warm water lets gluten develop and makes the pastry tough. Add it a few drops at a time, just until the dough holds together.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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