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 ↓
Hot Paste for Raised Pies
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Place the flour on a clean surface and make a well in the center.
Boil the butter in nearly 1 pint of water.
Pour the boiling water into the flour, starting with half.
Ensure all the butter is added to the flour and mix into a stiff paste.
Gradually add the remaining water if needed, but do not make the paste too soft.
Rest and shape
Transfer the paste to a covered saucepan and let it sit in a warm place for 10 minutes.
Remove from the pan, shape it, and use it to form your pie.
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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with the liquid.
- Butter
- Adds fat that tenderises the dough and keeps it short.
- Water
- Hydrates the flour so the starch and proteins form a workable paste.
The step that matters
Adding the water gradually. Too much liquid makes the paste soft and sticky, and the dough becomes hard to shape and can turn tough. Add water slowly and stop once the paste is stiff enough to hold its form.
“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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