Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cream Crust
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Stir salt into the flour.
Gradually mix in enough cream to form a smooth paste.
Shape and finish
For an excellent crust, roll in 4 ounces of butter after giving the paste a couple of turns.
Handle the dough lightly and send it to the oven as soon as it's ready.
Use this crust for fruit tarts, puffs, or meat pies.
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.
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,594 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
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Meat + creamtop 24% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,248 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the crust as the base for the paste.
- Thick sweet cream
- Binds the flour into a smooth, workable paste and adds moisture and richness.
- Butter
- Adds fat that makes the crust flakier and more tender when rolled in.
The step that matters
Handle the dough lightly. Overworking dough develops gluten, which makes the crust tough rather than tender. Keeping the handling light and moving the dough to the oven promptly helps preserve the flaky layers created by the butter.
“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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