Name: Avery Fine Crust for Orange Cheesecakes or Sweetmeats
Ingredients: 1 pound fine flour; 3 ounces refined sugar; ½ pound butter; 3 yolks of eggs; 2 whites of eggs

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 ↓

Avery Fine Crust for Orange Cheesecakes or Sweetmeats

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

Dry the flour.
Mix the flour with the sugar.
Work the butter with your hand until frothy.
Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter.
Incorporate the beaten and strained yolks and whites of the eggs.
If too soft, add more flour and sugar to make it rollable.

Shape and bake

Line your patty pans with the mixture.
Fill the lined pans.
Bake for about 15 minutes.

Ice and serve

Prepare icing by beating refined sugar with the egg white until thick.
Ice the cheesecakes.
Set them in the oven to harden before serving 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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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

Butter: Adds fat and richness, and when worked until frothy it helps give the crust its tender texture.
Egg yolks: Add richness and bind the dough together.
Egg whites: Add structure to the dough and help the icing thicken when beaten with sugar.
Fine flour: Provides the structure that holds the crust together.
Refined sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the icing set firm.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the butter. Adding flour gradually keeps the dough from becoming too stiff or uneven, so the butter and flour blend smoothly. If the dough is too soft, extra flour and sugar can be added to make it rollable.

“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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Avery Fine Crust for Orange Cheesecakes or Sweetmeats