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Dessert

Plain Pastry

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix baking powder and salt with the flour.

  2. Rub in the lard and butter until the mixture resembles fine meal.

  3. Add ice water to form a stiff paste.

  4. For a flaky crust, rub in only the lard.

Laminate and shape

  1. Roll out the dough to ⅓ inch thick, dot with half the butter, dust with flour, and fold in thirds.

  2. Roll out again, dot with remaining butter, and roll up like a jelly roll.

  3. Cut from the end as directed for puff pastry.

Bake

  1. Bake in a quick oven at 400°F (200°C) without greasing the pie plate.

  2. Cut holes in the upper crust to let steam escape.

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough when mixed with liquid.
Lard
Solid fat pieces melt in the oven, leaving layers that make the crust flaky.
Butter
Adds flavor and, as solid fat, helps create flaky layers in the crust.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and lighten.
Ice water
Binds the flour into a dough while staying cold, keeping the fat in solid pieces.

The step that matters

Rub in the lard and butter until fine meal. Fat should stay in small, cold, separate pieces. Overworking warms and smears it into the flour, and the crust loses the flaky layers that come from fat melting in the oven.

“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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