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Dessert

G-ood Plain Pie Crust

A simple pie crust made with flour, lard, baking soda, salt, and ice-cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

G-ood Plain Pie Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour and cream of tartar.

  2. Add 1⅓ cups of lard to the flour.

  3. Mix quickly and lightly.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a small cup of ice-cold water.

  5. Stir into the flour mixture, using just enough water to combine.

  6. Flour your work surface and take enough dough for the bottom crust of one pie.

  7. Roll it out without kneading.

  8. Keep handling to a minimum.

  9. Roll the crust thin.

  10. Cover your pie tins with the rolled crust and fill them.

Make the top crusts

  1. Take one-fourth of the remaining dough.

  2. Spread a little of the reserved lard on it.

  3. Sprinkle with flour.

  4. Fold it over twice.

  5. Roll it out again in the same manner.

  6. Repeat this process twice.

  7. Place all pies immediately in the oven.

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 + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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 crust once mixed with liquid.
Lard
Coats flour particles and stays in pieces, creating tender, flaky layers.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with baking soda to produce gas and lighten the crust.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to help the crust rise and become tender.

The step that matters

Keep handling to a minimum. Overworking the dough develops gluten and toughens the crust, while cold, minimally handled lard stays in pieces that melt during baking and leave flaky layers.

“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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