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Dessert

Crust for Raised Pies

A simple dough made from lard, butter, water, and flour for raised pie crust.

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

Crust for Raised Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine lard, butter, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. While the mixture is boiling hot, mix in the sifted flour first with a spoon, then with your hands.

Shape

  1. Roll out the dough as you would for any pie crust.

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).

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

Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and flaky by coating flour particles.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, contributing to a tender texture and rich taste.
Water
Melts the fats into the liquid and hydrates the flour so the dough can form.
Flour
Provides the structure that the gluten network and starch set into the crust.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the boiling liquid. Flour added to boiling-hot fat and water gelatinizes its starch and makes a dough that is workable while warm. Stirring with a spoon first avoids burning your hands and keeps the dough from becoming tough from overworking gluten.

“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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