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Dessert

Light Paste for Tarts and Cheesecakes

A light pastry dough made with flour, water, butter, and egg, used for tarts and cheesecakes.

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 ↓

Light Paste for Tarts and Cheesecakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg to a strong froth.

  2. Mix the egg with enough water to make a stiff paste with the flour.

  3. Roll the paste very thin.

  4. Dot the butter in small pieces on the paste and sprinkle with flour.

  5. Roll it up tightly and roll it out again, repeating the butter and flour process until all is used.

Shape and bake

  1. Line your pattypans with the paste and fill them.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 15 minutes.

Ice and serve

  1. Ice with a mixture of refined sugar and egg white 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

Fine flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the paste its structure.
Fresh butter
Forms separate layers as the dough is rolled, giving the pastry its flaky lightness.
Egg
Its beaten froth and proteins add structure and help the pastry rise and set in the oven.

The step that matters

Dot and roll the butter evenly. Butter spread between thin sheets of dough forms separate layers as the pastry is rolled. If butter is unevenly distributed or softens into the dough, the pastry turns dense rather than flaky, so each roll-up should carry butter and flour across the whole paste.

“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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