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Plain Short Paste for Dumplings and Puddings

A short dough made from flour, butter, salt, and water used for dumplings and puddings.

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 ↓

Plain Short Paste for Dumplings and Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the salt and water, then work the dough until smooth.

Shape and use

  1. Roll out the dough on a floured surface.

  2. Use the dough for apple dumplings and various other puddings.

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).

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 once mixed with liquid.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and short, coating flour particles.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can form and bind the dough together.

The step that matters

Working the dough until smooth. Kneading develops gluten, which gives the dough elasticity so it rolls out without tearing. Overworking after the water is added can make it tough, so stop once it is smooth.

“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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