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Raised Crust for Meat-pies, or Fowls, & C

A raised crust made from water, lard, butter, flour, and egg, used to seal meat pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Raised Crust for Meat-pies, or Fowls, & C

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Boil water with lard and dripping or butter.

  2. While hot, mix in enough flour to form a stiff, smooth paste.

  3. Knead and beat the paste with a rolling pin until smooth.

  4. Let the paste cool in a cloth or under a pan.

Shape the pie

  1. Roll the paste to the desired thickness and cut out the top and bottom for the pie, plus a long piece for the sides.

  2. Use egg to cement the bottom to the sides, pinching them together.

  3. Fill the pie and place the cover on top, pinching the edges to seal.

  4. If using a tin form, butter it before adding the paste, then bake after filling.

Bake

  1. Brush the top with egg before baking.

  2. If the sides are lighter in color, return the pie to the oven for an additional 15 minutes.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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 starch structure that sets the paste into a stiff, sturdy shell.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the paste tender and short while it is shaped.
Dripping or butter
Adds fat and flavour, enriching the paste and helping it brown.
Water
Hydrates the flour and melts the fat, letting the dough come together.
Egg
Acts as a glue to seal the pastry and browns the top when brushed on.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the hot water and fat. The paste must be mixed while hot so the starch gelatinises and the dough stays pliable. If it cools before mixing, it becomes hard to work and may crack when shaped.

“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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