Name: Family Pie Crust— Short
Ingredients: 1 pound sifted flour; ½ pound sweet lard or beef drippings; 2 teaspoons salt; cold water (enough to bind the dough); flour (for dusting)

Why it works: Flour and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Family Pie Crust— Short

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

1 pound sifted flour
½ pound sweet lard or beef drippings
2 teaspoons salt
cold water (enough to bind the dough)
flour (for dusting)

Directions

Make the dough

In a bowl, mix the sifted flour and salt with the lard or beef drippings until well combined.
Add enough cold water to bind the mixture together.

Roll and use

Flour your work surface and rolling pin.
Take a portion of the dough and roll it out to less than ¼ inch thick.
Use the crust as desired for your pie.

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.

Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,677 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and beef barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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 crust together once bound with water.
Lard or beef drippings: Coats flour particles to keep the crust tender and flaky rather than tough.
Cold water: Hydrates the flour so the dough binds into a rollable mass.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water. Adding too much water or working the dough too much develops gluten and makes the crust tough. Adding just enough cold water to bind keeps the fat from melting and the crust 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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Family Pie Crust— Short