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Raised Crust for Meat-pies, or Fowls, &C

A raised crust made from water, lard, butter, flour, and egg, used to cover meat pies or fowls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Raised Crust for Meat-pies, or Fowls, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hot-water paste

  1. Boil water with lard and dripping or butter until hot.

  2. Mix in enough flour to form a stiff, smooth paste by kneading and beating with a rolling pin.

  3. Let the paste cool in a cloth or under a pan.

Shape and fill

  1. Roll out the paste to the desired thickness.

  2. Cut out the top and bottom of the pie, plus a long piece for the sides.

  3. Seal the bottom to the sides with beaten egg, pinching them together.

  4. If using a tin form, butter it.

  5. Fill the pie.

  6. Place the cover on the pie.

  7. Pinch the edges together.

Bake

  1. Brush the crust with beaten egg before baking.

  2. Bake after filling and covering.

  3. If the sides are lighter in color, return to the oven for an additional 15 minutes.

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

Lard
Gives the paste a short, tender texture and rich flavor when hot-water crust is set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff paste together and lets it shape and hold a filling.
Dripping or butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the crust.
Egg
Seals the pastry edges and browns the crust when brushed on before baking.

The step that matters

Mix in flour while the water-fat mixture is hot. Flour must be worked in while the liquid is hot so the starch gelatinises and the paste stays pliable. If it cools first, the dough becomes hard to handle and can crack.

“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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