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 ↓
Pie-crust
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Chop the lard, butter, flour, and salt together in a bowl.
Wet the mixture with ice water until it holds together.
Roll out the dough to about 1 inch thick.
Spread small pieces of additional butter over the dough and roll it out again.
Repeat the butter rolling process three times, dusting flour over the butter each time.
Chill and shape
Form the dough into a long roll and chill it in a cool place for at least 1 hour.
Cut a piece from the end of the roll and roll it out into a thin crust to fit your pie plate.
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
- Forms the structure of the dough as its proteins build gluten when wet.
- Lard
- Shortens gluten strands, giving a tender, flaky texture.
- Butter
- Creates flaky layers as it melts and steams during baking, and adds flavor.
The step that matters
Keeping the fat cold while rolling. Cold lard and butter stay in solid pieces inside the dough. As they melt in the oven they leave separate layers, which makes the crust flaky. If the fat softens and blends into the flour, the crust turns dense and tough.
“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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