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Dessert

Short Crust for Tarts

A short crust pastry made with flour, butter, sugar, water, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Short Crust for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, lightly break 6 ounces of butter into 8 ounces of flour with minimal handling.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of powdered sugar and 1 to 2 tablespoons of water.

  3. Roll the mixture for several minutes, folding it like puff pastry and handling it as little as possible.

Make the paste

  1. In another bowl, crumble ½ pound of butter into 1 pound of flour, breaking it into small pieces.

  2. Mix in a pinch of salt and 2 ounces of sifted sugar.

  3. Add enough milk to form a very smooth and somewhat firm paste.

Bake

  1. Bake slowly until pale and lightly golden.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 that holds the pastry together once baked.
Unsalted butter
Creates flaky, tender layers as it stays in small pieces within the flour.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pastry brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture so the paste comes together smoothly and firmly.

The step that matters

Handle the dough as little as possible. Overworking develops gluten, which makes the pastry tough. Warmth from the hands also melts the butter, reducing the flaky texture.

“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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