Skip to main content
Dessert

Pastry Without Butter

A simple pastry dough made with flour, salt, olive oil, and cold water, suitable for savory or sweet fillings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,871 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pastry Without Butter

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and salt.

  2. Add the olive oil and mix until crumbly.

  3. Gradually add cold water, mixing until the dough forms.

  4. Knead gently on a floured surface until smooth.

Rest

  1. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes before 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 + olivetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,871 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Olive oil
Coats flour particles to shorten gluten and add tenderness and richness in place of butter.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour so gluten forms and the dough holds together.

The step that matters

Gradually add cold water, mixing until the dough forms. Adding the water slowly lets the flour absorb it evenly. Too much water or overworking the dough develops gluten quickly, which makes the pastry tough.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes