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Dessert

Good Plain Pastry

A cold shortcrust pastry dough made with flour, butter, salt, and ice water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

Good Plain Pastry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Work quickly in a cool room to keep the pastry cold.

  2. Flour a smooth surface.

Make the dough

  1. Chop one-third of the butter into the flour with a sharp knife and add salt.

  2. Mix in enough ice water to form a dough that doesn't stick to your hands.

  3. Roll out the dough to about half an inch thick.

Laminate the butter

  1. Cut the remaining butter into thick slices.

  2. Lay the slices on the dough with one inch between them.

  3. Dust flour lightly over the butter.

  4. Fold the dough to completely enclose it.

  5. Roll the dough to one inch thick.

  6. Dust with flour.

  7. Fold several times.

  8. Roll out again.

Rest

  1. Wrap the dough in a floured towel.

  2. Chill for 15 minutes.

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).

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 structure of the dough once mixed with water.
Unsalted butter
Creates flaky layers as pieces stay solid and steam during baking.
Ice water
Binds the flour into a dough while keeping the butter cold.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter cold. Cold butter stays in solid pieces that separate the dough into layers. As it bakes, the water in the butter turns to steam and lifts those layers. If the butter softens and blends into the flour, the pastry becomes dense instead of flaky.

“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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