Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Pie Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Sift together the flour, sugar, and salt.
Work in the shortening with a knife or spatula.
Moisten the mixture with ice water.
Roll out
Place the dough on a floured board and roll it thin.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Forms the gluten and structure that gives the crust its body.
- Shortening
- Coats flour particles to keep the crust tender and flaky by limiting gluten formation.
- Ice water
- Hydrates the flour just enough to bind the dough while keeping the fat cold and solid.
The step that matters
Work in the shortening with a knife or spatula. If the shortening softens or melts into the flour, it stops forming separate layers and the crust turns dense rather than flaky. Keeping it cold and working it in quickly preserves those pockets of fat.
“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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