Skip to main content
Dessert

Short Crust

A short crust pastry dough made with flour, butter, lard, egg yolks, baking powder, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, rub the butter and lard into the flour until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  2. Add the baking powder, salt, and egg yolks.

  3. Gradually mix in enough water to form a stiff paste.

Roll and use

  1. Roll out the dough to your desired thickness 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.

  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 + eggtop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once combined with liquid.
Unsalted butter
Rubbed into flour to create a tender, crumbly texture.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens gluten strands, giving a tender, crisp crust.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping bind the dough and add color.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lift the dough slightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Rubbing the fat into the flour. Fat should be worked in until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs, coating flour particles so they absorb less water. Overworking warms the fat and develops gluten, which makes the crust 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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes