Name: Pie Crust
Ingredients: 1 cup lard (or butter); 2 cups all-purpose flour; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (optional); cold water (as needed)

Why it works: Butter and flour 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 Crust

Ingredients

1 cup lard (or butter)
2 cups all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (optional)
cold water (as needed)

Directions

Prepare the dough

Keep lard or butter in the refrigerator until ready to use.
In a bowl, rub together the lard and flour loosely until combined.
Add salt if using lard or butter, then gradually add cold water until the dough holds together.
Do not overmix; the rolling pin will help with the texture.

Make the bottom and top crusts

For a bottom crust, mix ½ cup lard, 1 cup soft flour, a pinch of baking soda, and enough water to form a medium dough.
For a top crust, mix ½ cup butter, 1 cup soft flour, and enough water to form a medium dough.

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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Lard: Its solid fat coats flour particles, keeping the dough tender and flaky.
All-purpose flour: Forms the structure of the crust once mixed with water and fat.
Cold water: Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together without developing excess gluten.