Skip to main content
Dessert

Short Crust

A pastry dough made with flour, butter, egg yolk, lemon juice, and cold water, rolled and cut into strips for pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Short Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Separate the yolk from the egg white and break up the yolk.

  2. Add lemon juice and cold water to the yolk.

  3. Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.

  4. Add the liquid to the dry flour, stirring with a knife or metal spoon.

  5. Form the mixture into a large lump.

Shape the pastry

  1. Sprinkle the board with rice flour and roll out the dough.

  2. Cut the dough into long strips wide enough to fit the pie dish.

  3. Butter the sides and bottom of the pie dish, then place the strips inside.

  4. Wet the edges and decorate with twisted leaves.

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).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 pastry as the base for the dough.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to create a tender, crumbly texture and add richness.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the dough together.
Cold water
Moistens the flour so the dough holds together without developing too much gluten.
Lemon juice
Adds a little acidity that brightens flavour and tenderises the dough.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid to the flour. Stirring gently with a knife or metal spoon and using cold liquid keeps the butter in small pieces and limits gluten development, which keeps the pastry short and tender rather than tough.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, butter):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More short crust pastry recipes

Dough 3 See all 73 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes