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Dessert

Malted Paste

A dough made from flour, malt flour, fat, and 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 ↓

Malted Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Sift together the all-purpose flour and malt flour.

  2. Add the fat to the flour mixture, making sure it does not exceed 6 to 7 ounces.

  3. Add water gradually, using as little as possible to avoid a moist paste.

  4. Mix until combined, then roll out the paste immediately.

Bake

  1. Bake the paste as soon as it is prepared.

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 + malttop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Malt + buttertop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, 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
Provides the main structure as its proteins form gluten with the water.
Malt flour
Adds a malty flavor and aroma to the paste.
Fat
Coats the flour particles to tenderize the paste and limit gluten toughness.

The step that matters

Adding the water. Water turns the flour proteins into gluten, so adding too much or mixing too long makes the paste wet and tough. Adding it gradually and using as little as possible keeps the paste workable and tender.

“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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