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Dessert

French-paste, for Raised Pies

A dough paste used for making raised pies, made from flour, butter, salt, and cold water.

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 ↓

French-paste, for Raised Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Place the flour on a clean surface and make a well in the center.

  2. Add the salt, cold water, and butter into the well.

  3. Mix the ingredients together with your hands to form a firm paste.

  4. Gather the paste to the edge of the surface.

  5. Knead the paste by pressing with your palms.

  6. Sprinkle a few drops of water over the paste.

  7. Knead again, repeating this 3-4 times.

  8. Gather the paste into a clean bowl.

  9. Knead the paste by pressing with your elbow.

Rest

  1. Cover the paste.

  2. Let it rest until ready to use.

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 main structure of the dough as gluten develops during kneading.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and helps it separate into flaky layers.
Cold water
Provides the moisture that hydrates the flour and binds the dough together.

The step that matters

Kneading the paste. Kneading builds gluten for structure, but the butter must stay cold and in pieces; overworking softens it and the dough loses its flaky texture.

“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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