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Dessert

Short Crust

A pastry dough made from flour, butter, sugar, egg yolk, salt, lemon juice, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Short Crust

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix flour and butter on a clean surface until it resembles sifted bread crumbs.

  2. Add castor sugar and mix well.

  3. Make a well in the center and add the egg yolk.

  4. Sprinkle salt over the egg and add lemon juice.

  5. Add cold water and mix until a stiff paste forms.

Knead and roll

  1. Flour your hands and the surface to prevent sticking.

  2. Knead the paste lightly with your knuckles.

  3. Roll out the paste to the desired size and thickness.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provides the structure that holds the pastry together once moistened.
Butter
Coats flour particles to keep the pastry short and tender rather than tough.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the dough together.
Cold water
Moistens the flour so the dough comes together without developing much gluten.
Castor sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the pastry brown lightly.

The step that matters

Add the cold water gradually and mix only until a stiff paste forms. Too much water or overworking the dough develops gluten, making the pastry tough instead of short and crumbly. Cold ingredients keep the butter solid, so it creates flaky, tender layers as it bakes.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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