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Vert Rich Short Crust for Tarts

A rich short crust pastry for tarts, made from flour, butter, powdered sugar and cold water.

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 ↓

Vert Rich Short Crust for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Break the butter into the flour with minimal handling.

  2. Add the powdered sugar.

  3. Add the cold water.

Blend and shape

  1. Roll the dough for several minutes to blend the ingredients.

  2. Fold the dough together like puff pastry.

  3. Handle the dough as little as possible.

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).

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 pastry as its proteins bind with water.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that keeps the pastry tender and creates flaky layers when cold.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine, tender crumb to the pastry.
Cold water
Moistens the flour so the ingredients hold together as a dough.

The step that matters

Handle the dough as little as possible. Working the dough develops gluten, which makes pastry tough. Keeping the butter cold and in pieces preserves the fat layers that make it tender and flaky.

“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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