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Dessert

Plain Pastry

A simple pastry dough made from graham flour, white flour, cold sweet cream, and optional baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Plain Pastry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix together Graham flour and white flour.

  2. Add cold sweet cream and stir rapidly with a spoon.

  3. Gather the dough with your fingers without kneading.

Chill, roll and bake

  1. Chill the dough in a cool place for 30 minutes before rolling out.

  2. If using baking powder, roll and bake 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 + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and a coarser, nutty texture to the dough.
White flour
Forms the main gluten structure that holds the pastry together.
Cold sweet cream
Adds fat and moisture, and staying cold keeps the pastry tender and flaky.
Baking powder
Releases gas for lift, making the pastry rise and lighten when baked.

The step that matters

Gather the dough without kneading. Kneading develops gluten strands that make pastry tough. Stirring briefly and gathering gently keeps the dough tender, so handle it as little as possible.

“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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