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Dessert

Vert Superior Suet-crust

A mixture of suet, butter, flour, and salt used as a crust.

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

Vert Superior Suet-crust

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the skin from the suet and chop it finely.

  2. Place the chopped suet in a mortar with the butter and pound until smooth.

Make the crust

  1. Combine the suet mixture with the flour and salt, working it with your fingers until well mixed.

  2. For a richer crust, use 16 oz of suet and 4 oz of butter with 1.5 lb of flour.

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. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

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

  3. Flour + vealtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 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
Forms the structure of the crust as the main dry base.
Kidney suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and rich.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor that softens the suet mixture into a smooth paste.

The step that matters

Pounding the suet and butter until smooth. Suet is firm fat. Pounding it with butter breaks it into a smooth, evenly distributed paste, so it coats the flour rather than leaving greasy lumps that can make the crust uneven in 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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