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 ↓
Mince Pie
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.
Make the dough
In a bowl, rub ⅓ pound of sweet lard into 1 quart of flour until crumbly.
Add ice water gradually to form a dough.
Roll out the dough very thin and dot with butter.
Fold the dough into a tight roll, flatten, and roll out again into a thin sheet.
Repeat the butter dotting and rolling process two more times.
Chill the final roll in a cold place for 1 hour.
Assemble and bake
Line your pie plates with the chilled dough.
Fill with mince-meat and cut strips of dough to create a lattice top.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + meattop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,594 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Flour + meattop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,529 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 as its proteins bind with water.
- Sweet lard
- Rubbed into flour to shorten the dough, giving a tender, flaky texture.
- Butter
- Dotted and folded into the dough, creating layers that puff into flakiness as it bakes.
- Ice water
- Hydrates the flour while staying cold, keeping the fat solid and the dough workable.
The step that matters
Keeping the dough cold during lamination. Butter and lard must stay solid between layers. If the dough warms and the fat melts, it soaks into the flour instead of separating layers, so the crust turns dense rather than 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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