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Dessert

Transparent Crust for Tarts

A thin, translucent crust made from butter, egg, and flour, brushed with water and sprinkled with sugar before baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Transparent Crust for Tarts

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Beat the egg until thin.

  2. Melt the butter without oiling and let it cool.

  3. Mix the cooled butter with the egg.

  4. Stir the mixture into the flour until well combined.

  5. Roll out the dough very thin and line the tart pans quickly.

Bake

  1. Before baking, brush the crusts with water and sprinkle sugar on top.

  2. Bake in a lightly heated oven at 350°F (175°C) until 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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 structure of the dough once combined with the liquid and fat.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that makes the crust tender and flaky and helps it brown.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness to hold the crust together.
Sugar
Sprinkled on top, it adds sweetness and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough very thin and line the tart pans quickly. Overworking the dough develops gluten, making the crust tough, and warm dough softens the butter and loses shape. Rolling thin and working fast keeps the butter cold and the crust tender.

“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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