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Dessert

A Very Fine Crust for Orange Cheesecakes, or Sweetmeats

A dough crust for orange cheesecakes or sweetmeats made from flour, sugar, butter, egg yolks, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

A Very Fine Crust for Orange Cheesecakes, or Sweetmeats

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Dry the flour thoroughly and mix it with the sugar.

  2. Work the butter with your hands until frothy.

  3. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter, mixing well.

  4. Incorporate the beaten and strained egg yolks and whites.

  5. If the mixture is too soft, add more flour and sugar until it can be rolled out.

Shape and bake

  1. Line your tart pans with the dough and fill as desired.

  2. Bake for about 15 minutes until golden.

Ice and serve

  1. Prepare icing by beating refined sugar with egg white until thick.

  2. Ice the baked crusts and return them to the oven to harden.

  3. Serve cold.

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once it is mixed with the butter and eggs.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and is worked into the dough for a short texture.
Egg yolks
Add fat and richness and help bind the dough together.
Egg whites
Help bind the dough and, beaten with sugar, form the icing that hardens in the oven.
Refined sugar
Sweetens the crust and, beaten with egg white, makes the icing.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the butter. Adding flour gradually and mixing well keeps the dough evenly combined. Too much flour at once makes the dough dry and crumbly, while too little leaves it soft and hard to roll out.

“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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