Skip to main content
Dessert

Short Crust

A short crust pastry dough made with flour, butter, sugar, egg yolk, salt, lemon juice, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Short Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and butter until crumbly.

  2. Add castor sugar and mix well.

  3. Make a well in the center and add the egg yolk.

  4. Sprinkle salt over the egg yolk.

  5. Add lemon juice and cold water.

  6. Mix with fingers until a stiff paste forms.

Shape the pastry

  1. Flour your hands and the board to prevent sticking.

  2. Knead the paste lightly with your knuckles.

  3. Roll out the paste to the desired size and thickness.

  4. For a fruit tart, roll to fit the pie dish, slightly larger than the dish.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry as it binds with the liquid.
Butter
Coats the flour so the pastry turns short and crumbly rather than tough.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the dough together.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning in the baked crust.

The step that matters

Mix with fingers until a stiff paste forms. Overworking the dough develops gluten and makes the pastry tough. Keep the mixing brief and the butter cool so the crust stays short and tender.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, 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.

More short crust pastry recipes

Dough 3 See all 73 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes