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Dessert

Patty Shells

Patty shells are small pastry shells made from flour, butter, baking powder, salt, and cold water.

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 ↓

Patty Shells

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Gradually work the butter into the flour mixture.

  3. Add enough cold water to form a stiff dough.

  4. Roll out the dough.

  5. Sprinkle with some of the remaining butter.

  6. Cut into small pieces.

  7. Dredge with flour.

  8. Roll the dough up like a jelly roll.

  9. Roll it out again.

  10. Repeat the rolling and dredging process once more.

  11. Add the remaining butter.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut into rounds, 2 inches in diameter.

  3. Press a small cutter, 1 inch in diameter, into each round to create a shallow indentation.

  4. Place on buttered baking sheets.

  5. Bake until golden brown.

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 structure of the dough and sets as the shells bake.
Butter
Creates flaky layers as it is rolled into the dough and melts during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the shells rise and lighten.
Cold water
Binds the flour and butter into a stiff dough.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter in layers during rolling. The butter must stay cold and separate from the flour so that steam released in the oven pushes the layers apart, creating flakiness. If the butter softens and blends into the dough, the shells turn dense instead of flaky.

“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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