Name: Rich Cream Paste for Tarts
Ingredients: 1 pound all-purpose flour; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon crushed loaf sugar; ¼ pound sweet butter; cream (enough to make a smooth paste) or 2 eggs beaten with a little milk

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rich Cream Paste for Tarts

Ingredients

1 pound all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon crushed loaf sugar
¼ pound sweet butter
cream (enough to make a smooth paste) or 2 eggs beaten with a little milk

Directions

Prepare

Dry and sift the flour.
Mix the flour with salt and crushed sugar.
Rub in the butter until well combined.

Make the dough

Gradually mix in enough cream to form a smooth paste. Alternatively, use the beaten eggs with milk.
Roll out the paste two or three times and use immediately.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Sweet butter: Adds fat that makes the pastry tender and short when rubbed into the flour.
Cream: Provides the liquid that binds the flour and fat into a smooth paste.
Crushed loaf sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the pastry brown lightly.

The step that matters

Rubbing in the butter until well combined. If the butter is not evenly distributed into the flour, the dough can turn out uneven and tough in places, since fat coats flour particles and limits gluten development. Stop once the mixture looks like fine crumbs so the pastry stays tender.

“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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Rich Cream Paste for Tarts