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Cold Water Paste for Raised Pies

A simple cold-water dough for raised pies, made with flour, butter, salt, optional egg, and water.

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 ↓

Cold Water Paste for Raised Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the salt and mix.

  3. Incorporate the egg and enough water to form a paste.

Rest and use

  1. Fold in two, spread with fat, fold again, and set aside for one hour.

  2. Roll out and use.

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 + 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).

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 it is bound with water.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to coat it, adding tenderness and flakiness to the crust.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough together.

The step that matters

Adding the water. Too much water develops gluten and makes the pastry tough, while too little leaves it crumbly and hard to bind. Add it gradually until the dough just holds together.

“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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