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Dessert

A Very Fine Crust for Orange Cheesecakes, or Sweetmeats

A pastry crust made from flour, sugar, butter, egg yolks, and egg whites, baked and iced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

A Very Fine Crust for Orange Cheesecakes, or Sweetmeats

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Dry the flour and mix it with the sugar.

  2. Work the butter with your hand until frothy.

  3. Gradually add the flour mixture and the beaten egg yolks and whites.

  4. If the mixture is too soft, add more flour and sugar to make it rollable.

Bake the pastries

  1. Line your patty pans with the dough.

  2. Fill the lined patty pans.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven for about 15 minutes.

Ice and serve

  1. Prepare icing by beating refined sugar with the egg whites until thick.

  2. Ice the baked pastries.

  3. Place the iced pastries in the oven to harden.

  4. Serve cold.

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).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Fine flour
Provides the main structure of the dough once combined with butter and eggs.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the dough its tender texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping bind the dough and tenderize it.
Egg whites
Add moisture and help bind the dough, and whipped into icing they thicken it.
Refined sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown lightly during baking.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the soft mixture. Flour absorbs liquid from the butter and eggs, so adding too much or too little changes whether the dough can be rolled and lined. Adding it gradually lets you judge the texture before the dough sets.

“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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