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Dessert

Sweet or Biscuit Crust

A sweet pastry crust made from flour, egg yolks, sugar, butter, and liquid, used for tarts.

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

Sweet or Biscuit Crust

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Place the flour on a clean surface and add the egg yolks, mixing until the egg is no longer visible.

  2. Incorporate the sugar and mix well into the flour.

  3. Add the butter and mix until combined.

  4. Gradually add water or milk to form a stiff paste.

  5. Knead the dough until smooth, then roll it to an eighth of an inch thick.

Glaze and bake

  1. Use the dough for tarts, glazing them before or after baking.

  2. To glaze, beat the egg white and spread it on top, then sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Dampen the sugar slightly with water and sprinkle more sugar on top.

  4. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) and notch the edges finely.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once bound with liquid.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crust tender and rich.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the glaze brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Gradually add water or milk to form a stiff paste. Adding liquid too quickly can make the dough sticky and hard to handle, while too little leaves it crumbly. Adding it slowly lets the flour absorb just enough moisture to form a smooth, workable dough.

“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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