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Raised Crusts for Meat Pies

A raised crust for meat pies made from lard, butter, flour, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Crusts for Meat Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Boil water with fine lard and fresh dripping or butter.

  2. Mix the hot mixture with enough flour to form a stiff, smooth paste.

  3. Knead and beat the paste with a rolling pin until smooth.

  4. Soak a lump of the paste in a cloth or under a pan until near cold.

Shape the pie

  1. Roll out the paste to a proper thickness and cut out the top and bottom of the pie, plus a long piece for the sides.

  2. Cement the bottom to the sides with egg, pinching them together.

  3. Fill the pie, place the cover on, and pinch it to the side crust.

  4. If using a tin form, butter it and bake after filling and covering.

Bake and finish

  1. After baking, return the pie to the oven for an additional 15 minutes if the sides are too light.

  2. Brush the top with egg using a feather.

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

Fine lard
Forms the fat base that gives the crust its rich, short texture.
Fresh dripping or butter
Adds fat and flavour to the paste, contributing to its richness and tenderness.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff paste together and lets it be shaped.
Egg
Acts as a glue to seal the pie parts and gives the top a glossy, browned finish.

The step that matters

Soak the paste until near cold before rolling. Hot paste is soft and sticky and hard to shape; cooling it firms the fat so the crust holds its form and stays workable.

“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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