Name: Butter Crust for Puddings
Ingredients: 1 pound all-purpose flour; 8 ounces unsalted butter; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (for fruit puddings); ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt (for meat puddings)

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 ↓

Butter Crust for Puddings

Ingredients

1 pound all-purpose flour
8 ounces unsalted butter
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (for fruit puddings)
½ teaspoon coarse sea salt (for meat puddings)

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, lightly break the butter into the flour.
Add the salt and mix well.

Make the dough

Gradually add cold water to form a dough.
Roll out the dough as needed for your pudding.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Flour + meattop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,529 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 water is added.
Unsalted butter: Coats the flour and creates a tender, flaky texture as it stays in pieces.
Cold water (in the method): Binds the flour and butter into a cohesive dough.

The step that matters

Gradually add cold water to form a dough. Adding water slowly and keeping it cold keeps the butter in small pieces. Cold butter melts later in the oven, creating flakiness. Too much water or warm water makes the dough tough and sticky.

“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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Butter Crust for Puddings