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Dessert

Delicate Sugar Paste, for Tarts, or Rich Cheese-cakes

A stiff sugar paste made with flour, butter, powdered sugar, and water, used for tarts or rich cheese cakes.

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

Delicate Sugar Paste, for Tarts, or Rich Cheese-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles grated bread.

  2. Sift the powdered sugar through a fine sieve and mix it well with the flour.

  3. Add boiling water gradually to form a stiff paste.

  4. Optionally, add a little rose or orange-flower water for flavor.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + rosetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + rosetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,643 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the paste once moistened with water.
Butter
Coats the flour particles, adding richness and tenderness to the paste.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the paste and dissolves easily into the dough for a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water. Water must be added gradually so the paste hydrates evenly. Adding it too fast can make the paste sticky or uneven, while adding too little leaves it crumbly and hard to roll.

“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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