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Dessert

Tart Crust

A pastry crust made from lard, flour, water, egg white, and sugar, topped with jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Tart Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub lard into flour until crumbly.

  2. Add water, beaten egg white, and sugar.

  3. Mix until combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into round pieces.

  2. Cut a smaller hole in the center of half the pieces.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

Assemble

  1. Spread jelly on the plain pieces.

  2. Top with the cut pieces.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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
Fat coats flour particles, keeping the crust tender and flaky when baked.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the crust together.
Egg white
Binds the dough and helps it set and hold its shape in the oven.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Mix until combined. Stirring the dough too much develops gluten, which makes the crust tough instead of tender. Mix only until the dough holds together.

“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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