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 ↓
Pie Crusts
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
In a large bowl, combine the flour and butter or lard, breaking it up until small lumps remain visible.
Add cold water gradually until the mixture forms a soft dough, handling it as little as possible.
Remove the dough from the bowl and divide it into pieces for rolling out.
Roll out
Roll out the dough for the top and bottom crusts as needed.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the main structure that holds the crust together as it bakes.
- Butter or lard
- Coats flour particles and keeps them separate, creating a tender, flaky texture.
- Cold water
- Binds the flour and fat into a dough without melting the fat.
The step that matters
Adding the water. Adding water gradually and handling the dough as little as possible keeps it tender. Overworking develops gluten, which makes the crust tough, and warm fat melting into the flour makes it greasy rather than flaky.
“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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