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Hot-water-paste for Raised Pies

A paste made from flour, coarse sea salt, hot water, and butter used to raise pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Hot-water-paste for Raised Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the flour on a clean surface and create a hollow in the center.

  2. Add the salt, hot water, and dissolved butter into the hollow.

Make the paste

  1. Mix everything together with your hands to form a firm paste.

  2. Knead the paste compactly with both hands.

Rest

  1. Wrap the paste in a cloth and place it in a warm saucepan until ready to use.

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 paste that holds the pie walls together.
Hot water
Hydrates the flour and keeps the paste soft and pliable while warm.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the finished crust.

The step that matters

Working the paste while warm. Hot water keeps the paste soft and pliable. As it cools, the paste stiffens and becomes brittle, so it can crack when shaped. Mixing and kneading while it is still warm, and keeping it wrapped and warm until use, helps it stay workable.

“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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