Name: Common Short Crust
Ingredients: 1/2 pint of boiling milk; 1/2 pint of water; two tablespoonfuls of fine moist sugar; 1/2 saltspoonful of salt; 1/3 pint of water; one from; four officers to keep watch; 2 eggs; nine principal aqueducts; salt

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

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.

Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.
Boiling milk: Moistens the flour and helps bind the dough into a smooth paste.

The step that matters

Work the mixture into a smooth paste with the boiling milk. Once the milk is added, the flour's starch swells and the dough becomes elastic. Working it too much develops toughness, so the crust turns tough rather than short and crisp.

“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.

Ingredient	Portion assumed	kcal
Milk	1 cup (244ml) whole	149
Egg	1 large egg (50g)	78
Sugar	1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated	49
Salt	1 tsp (6g)	0
Water	not in our table	0

Common Short Crust