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Dessert

Plain Pastry for Pihs

A simple pie pastry made with flour, butter, water, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 for Pihs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour and salt together, reserving a little flour for the board.

  2. Cut the butter into the flour using a knife.

  3. Gradually add the cold water, mixing lightly with the knife.

  4. Turn the mixture onto the board and roll it out twice, folding it together after the first roll.

  5. For a richer top crust, add bits of butter over the rolled paste, fold, and roll again several times.

  6. Cover the folded paste and refrigerate for an hour before using.

Line and fill the pie

  1. Roll the paste to ⅛ inch thick and slightly larger than the pie tin.

  2. Dust the pan with flour and place the paste in it, allowing it to shrink.

  3. Cut a narrow strip of paste and lay it around the edge, moistening it to stick.

  4. Brush the bottom crust with egg white to prevent sogginess.

  5. Add the filling and cover with another sheet of pastry.

  6. Moisten the edge of the top crust to adhere it to the bottom crust.

  7. Trim and press the edges lightly together, then cut slits in the top crust for steam to escape.

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 crust its structure.
Butter
Its fat creates flaky layers by coating flour and separating the dough.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together without developing too much gluten.
Lard or cottolene
Optional fat that adds tenderness and flakiness in place of part of the butter.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter cold while cutting it into the flour. Cold butter stays in solid pieces that melt during baking and leave steam pockets, producing flakiness. If it softens and blends in fully, the crust turns dense and tough.

“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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