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Dessert

Plain Pastry

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the dough

  1. Sift the salt into the flour.

  2. Rub in the butter with a knife, spoon, or your fingertips.

  3. Add the ice water gradually, forming soft, tiny masses.

  4. Press the masses together and toss onto a floured board.

Roll and assemble

  1. Roll out the pastry in one direction only, minimizing manipulation.

  2. If using two crusts, moisten the edge of the lower crust with cold water.

  3. Place a half-inch strip of pastry around the edge of the lower crust. Moisten the strip.

  4. Press the upper crust over it.

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

Pastry flour
Forms the structure of the dough when hydrated and worked gently.
Butter
Coats flour particles in fat, keeping the pastry tender and flaky.
Ice water
Supplies moisture to bind the dough while staying cold to limit gluten development.

The step that matters

Add the ice water gradually. Adding water slowly and keeping it cold lets the dough form soft, tiny masses without overworking it. Too much water or warmth develops gluten, making the pastry tough.

“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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