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Dessert

A Very Fine Crust for Orange Cheesecakes, or Sweet-meats

A crust made from butter, flour, sugar, and eggs, baked and iced for orange cheesecakes.

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 ↓

A Very Fine Crust for Orange Cheesecakes, or Sweet-meats

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Dry the flour and mix it with the sugar.

  2. Work the butter with your hands until frothy.

  3. Gradually add the flour mixture and the beaten egg yolks and whites.

  4. If the mixture is too soft, add more flour and sugar to make it rollable.

Shape and bake

  1. Line your patty pans with the dough and fill them.

  2. Bake for about 15 minutes.

Ice and finish

  1. Prepare icing by beating refined sugar with the egg white until thick.

  2. Ice the baked crusts and set them in the oven to harden before serving cold.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Butter
Gives the dough richness and tenderness, and helps bind it when worked.
Fine flour
Provides the structure that holds the crust together once baked.
Refined sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown lightly in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness, while the whites help the icing set firm.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the dough. If the dough is too soft it will not hold its shape in the patty pans. Adding flour gradually, and only as needed, keeps the texture workable without making the crust dry or 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.

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