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Dessert

Excellent Bread Crust for Hot Pies or Tarts

A bread crust made from white dough, butter, yeast, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Excellent Bread Crust for Hot Pies or Tarts

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Roll out the white dough into a square.

  2. Make the butter into a ball and place it in the center of the dough.

  3. Fold the corners of the dough over the butter and roll it out lightly two or three times, folding the ends into the center each time.

  4. Use the dough immediately.

Make the yeast dough

  1. Mix ½ pound of flour with 1 ounce of yeast and 5 to 6 tablespoons of warm milk or cream to make a light dough.

  2. Let the dough rise until it doubles in size, about 4 to 5 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into small brioche shapes or roll it an inch thick and cut into rusks.

  2. Wash the tops with beaten egg and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 10 to 15 minutes until well baked and colored.

  3. Divide the rusks and return them to the oven to crisp and brown evenly.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Creates flaky layers as it is folded into the dough and melts during baking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it rises and bakes.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light and airy.
Milk or cream
Adds moisture to hydrate the flour and softens the dough, with fat in cream adding richness.
Beaten egg (in the method)
Gives the tops a glossy surface and helps them brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas until the dough doubles. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while the rise sets the light texture the shapes depend on.

“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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