Skip to main content
Main

Crust, for Venison Pastry

A buttery pastry crust for venison pastry, made with flour, butter, eggs, and warm water.

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

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 ↓

Crust, for Venison Pastry

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Mix the flour and butter together until crumbly.

  2. Add the eggs and enough warm water to form a smooth paste.

Shape the crust

  1. Roll out the paste and line the inside of a dish, leaving the bottom uncovered.

  2. Make the crust thick to withstand long baking.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 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 gluten network that gives the crust its structure and body.
Butter
Coats the flour particles, adding richness and a tender texture to the crust.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Warm water
Hydrates the flour so the mixture comes together into a workable paste.

The step that matters

Forming the smooth paste. Adding the warm water gradually until the paste is smooth matters because too much liquid develops gluten and makes the crust tough, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard to shape.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes