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Very Superior Suet-crust

A simple suet crust dough made with flour, suet, butter, salt, and cold water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Superior Suet-crust

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt.

  2. Add the shredded suet and butter, mixing until crumbly.

  3. Add cold water gradually, mixing until the dough comes together.

  4. Roll out the dough on a floured surface to your desired thickness.

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).

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 main structure of the dough once bound with water.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and short as it is worked.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, helping the dough stay crumbly and rich.

The step that matters

Add cold water gradually. Adding water slowly and keeping it cold keeps fat solid and gluten development limited, so the crust stays tender rather than tough.

“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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