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Dessert

Plain Pastry

A simple pastry dough made with flour, butter, lard, salt, and ice 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 ↓

Plain Pastry

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fats

  1. Wash the butter and squeeze out all the milk and water, then flatten it.

Make and fold the dough

  1. Add the salt to the flour and cut in the lard with a knife.

  2. Moisten the mixture with cold water.

  3. Toss the dough on a board dusted with flour, then pat and roll it out.

  4. Fold in the butter, roll out, and repeat folding and rolling several times.

Rest and bake

  1. Cover with cheesecloth and set aside in a cool place, avoiding direct contact with ice.

  2. Roll thin and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure once moistened and rolled.
Butter
Folded in as layers, it creates flaky separation as it melts and steams during baking.
Lard
Cut into the flour, it coats flour particles and keeps the dough tender and short.

The step that matters

Keeping the fat cold and the dough rested. Cold butter and lard stay in distinct pieces and layers; if they soften and blend into the flour, the dough loses flakiness. Resting the dough relaxes gluten so it rolls without shrinking.

“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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