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 ↓
Plain Pastry
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Combine the flour, butter, and lard in a large bowl.
Mix with a knife until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Gradually add cold water and mix until the dough comes together.
Shape the crusts
Roll out the dough to fit two pie pans, creating both top and bottom crusts.
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).
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
- Provides the structure that holds the crust together as it bakes.
- Butter
- Stays in small solid pieces that melt in the oven, creating flaky layers and rich flavor.
- Lard
- Keeps the crust tender and flaky because it coats flour particles and resists gluten formation.
The step that matters
Gradually add cold water and mix until the dough comes together. Adding water slowly and mixing only until the dough holds together limits gluten development, which keeps the crust tender. Cold water also keeps the fat in solid pieces so it creates flaky layers rather than melting into the flour.
“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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