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Dessert

Light Paste for Tarts and Cheesecakes

A light pastry dough made from egg white, flour, water, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Light Paste for Tarts and Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg white until frothy.

  2. Mix with water to form a stiff paste with the flour.

  3. Roll the paste very thin.

Laminate

  1. Dot with small pieces of butter and sprinkle with flour.

  2. Roll it up tightly.

  3. Roll it out again and repeat with more butter.

  4. Continue until all ingredients are used.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 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

Fine flour
Forms the stiff paste and provides the structure of the dough.
Butter
Creates layers that separate the dough, giving a light, flaky texture when baked.
Egg white
Adds structure and lightness to the paste through its proteins.

The step that matters

Rolling the butter in evenly. Butter pieces must be spread and folded into the dough in even layers. If they melt into the paste or are unevenly distributed, the layers will not separate, and the pastry will be dense rather than light and 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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