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Olive Butter Crust

A quick dough made from flour, olive butter, water, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Olive Butter Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour with salt and baking soda.

  2. Combine Olive Butter and ice-cold water in another bowl.

  3. Add the Olive Butter mixture to the flour and mix quickly and lightly.

Laminate and chill

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface.

  2. Fold the sides and then the ends in, turn it around, and roll it out again.

  3. Repeat the folding and rolling process four times.

  4. Chill the dough in the refrigerator until ready to use.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,871 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Olive butter
Provides fat that stays in solid pieces, creating layers and a flaky, tender texture.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure once mixed with liquid.
Ice-cold water
Keeps the fat cold and adds moisture, limiting gluten development for a tender crust.
Baking soda
Raises the dough's pH and can promote browning and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Add the Olive Butter mixture to the flour and mix quickly and lightly.. Overworking the dough develops too much gluten, making the crust tough. Keeping the fat in visible pieces and the mixing brief preserves the layers that give a flaky texture.

“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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