Name: Rich Cream Paste for Tarts
Ingredients: 1 pound flour; ½ teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon crushed loaf sugar; ¼ pound sweet butter; sufficient cream (or milk if cream is unavailable)

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

1 pound flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon crushed loaf sugar
¼ pound sweet butter
sufficient cream (or milk if cream is unavailable)

Directions

Make the paste

Dry and sift the flour.
Mix the flour with salt and crushed sugar.
Rub in the butter until well combined.
Gradually mix in enough cream to form a smooth paste.
If cream is unavailable, beat milk with eggs and use instead.

Roll and use

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

Flour: Provides the structure that holds the dough together once moistened.
Butter: Coats the flour particles and keeps the pastry tender and crumbly.
Cream: Adds moisture so the flour hydrates into a cohesive paste.
Crushed loaf sugar: Adds mild sweetness and helps the crust brown lightly.

The step that matters

Gradually mixing in the cream. Add the cream a little at a time and stop once the paste just comes together. Too much liquid or excessive handling develops gluten, which makes the tart dough tough rather than 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