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 Pie Crust
Ingredients
Directions
Sift flour, salt, and baking powder into a cold bowl.
Work in chilled butter and lard using your fingers or a knife until it resembles coarse meal.
Gradually moisten with cold water, handling lightly until it forms a dough.
Roll out the dough on a floured board to about ¼ inch thick.
Place chilled butter in the center of the lower half of the dough and fold the upper half over it.
Seal the edges to trap air, then fold the sides over the butter.
Turn the dough, pat into shape, and roll out again, dredging with flour as needed.
Fold to create three layers, then divide in half.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
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