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Dessert

Very Light Paste

A light pastry dough made from flour, butter, eggs, and water, suitable for sweet fillings.

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 ↓

Very Light Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pastry

  1. Mix the flour and water to form a stiff paste.

  2. Roll out the paste and place small bits of butter on it.

  3. Beat the egg whites until frothy and brush over the paste before folding.

  4. Repeat the process of rolling out and adding butter until all egg whites are used.

Make the filling

  1. For a sweet filling, mix flour with sugar and butter until frothy.

  2. Gradually add beaten egg yolks and whites, adjusting with more flour if too soft.

Bake and serve

  1. Line patty pans with the mixture and bake for about 15 minutes.

  2. Bake with a mixture of refined sugar and beaten egg white, then set in the oven to harden.

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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 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

Butter
Melts into layers during rolling and baking, giving the pastry its flakiness and richness.
Egg whites
Beaten and brushed on the paste to add structure and help the pastry set crisp.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture to the filling and help bind it.
Fine flour
Forms the stiff paste that provides the basic structure of the pastry.
Refined sugar
Adds sweetness to the filling and helps it caramelize and harden in the oven.

The step that matters

Repeat rolling and adding butter until all egg whites are used. Each fold layers butter between sheets of dough. If the butter softens into the paste or the dough is over-worked, the layers merge and the pastry loses its flaky texture.

“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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