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Rich Old-fashioned Pie Crust

A rich pie crust made with lard, lemon juice, pastry flour, salt, egg, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rich Old-fashioned Pie Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift flour and salt into a mixing bowl.

  2. Flour the blade of a knife and chop the lard into the flour, keeping flour between the knife and the lard.

  3. When the mixture resembles meal, add the beaten egg and lemon juice.

  4. Add enough cold water to form a dough.

  5. Roll the pastry into a ball with the knife.

Chill and roll

  1. Chill in the refrigerator for an hour if possible.

  2. Roll out the pastry gently.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Coats flour particles so they stay separate, producing a flaky, tender crust.
Pastry flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the crust its structure.
Egg
Adds binding and richness, helping hold the dough together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that tenderizes gluten, keeping the crust tender.

The step that matters

Chopping the lard into the flour. If the lard softens or melts into the flour, it blends in rather than staying in small pieces, so the crust turns dense instead of flaky. Keeping flour between the knife and the lard and working quickly keeps the pieces distinct.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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