Skip to main content
Bread

Crust for Raised Pies

A dough made from water, lard, butter, flour, and egg for glazing, used as crust for raised pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Raised Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Boil water with fine lard and fresh dripping or butter.

  2. Mix in enough flour to form a stiff, smooth paste through kneading.

  3. Soak the paste in a cloth or under a pan until nearly cold.

Shape and fill

  1. Shape the paste with your hands to the desired thickness.

  2. Fill the pie with meat, place the lid on, and seal the edges.

Glaze and bake

  1. Glaze the top with egg before baking.

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

Water
Melts the fats into the flour so the dough can be kneaded into a workable paste.
Fine lard
Adds fat that shortens the paste, giving it a tender, crumbly bite.
Fresh dripping or butter
Adds fat and flavour, contributing richness and tenderness to the crust.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste, setting firm as it cools and holds its shape.
Egg
Brushed on top, it promotes browning and a glossy finish during baking.

The step that matters

Soak the paste until nearly cold. The paste must cool enough to hold its shape when raised by hand. If it is still warm, it will be too soft to shape and may slump or sag.

“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

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes