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Dessert

Sweet or Biscuit Crust

A simple crust made from flour, egg yolks, sugar, butter, and water or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet or Biscuit Crust

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Place the flour on a clean surface and add the egg yolks.

  2. Mix until the egg is fully incorporated.

  3. Add the sugar and work it into the flour.

  4. Incorporate the butter and mix in enough water or milk to form a stiff paste.

  5. Knead the dough until smooth, then roll it out to ½ inch thickness.

Shape and bake

  1. Use for tarts, either slip tarts or covered tarts.

  2. For glazed tarts, beat an egg white and spread it on top before baking.

  3. Sprinkle sugar on top, dampen with water, and add more sugar.

  4. Notch the edge of the tart finely.

  5. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 dough that holds the tart shape.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, binding the dough and giving it tenderness.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crust tender and short.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Mixing in the water or milk. Adding too much liquid makes the dough sticky and tough, while too little leaves it crumbly. Aim for a stiff paste, since gluten forms as the dough is worked and overworking toughens the crust.

“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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