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Dessert

Crust for Meat Pies

A simple dough for meat pies made with flour, lard, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Crust for Meat Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of hot water and stir it into the milk.

  3. Add the milk mixture to the flour, then mix in the lard and cream of tartar until a dough forms.

Shape the crust

  1. Knead the dough lightly and roll it out to fit your pie dish.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 that holds the crust together.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crust and keeps it flaky.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar and milk to help the crust rise and brown.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda for lift and tenderness.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and helps bind the dough.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda. Baking soda must be fully dissolved in hot water before it meets the milk, so it spreads evenly. Clumps of soda can leave bitter, yellow spots and uneven rising in the crust.

“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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