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 Pies
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Sift the flour and salt together, reserving a little flour for the board.
Cut the butter into the flour using a knife.
Gradually add the cold water, mixing lightly with the knife.
Turn the mixture onto a floured board.
Roll the dough out twice.
Fold the dough together after the first roll.
Add bits of butter to the rolled dough.
Fold the dough.
Roll the dough again several times.
Wrap the folded dough in a napkin.
Refrigerate the dough for an hour.
Line and fill the pie
Roll the dough to ⅛ inch thick and slightly larger than the pie tin.
Dust the pie pan with flour.
Place the rolled dough in the pie pan, allowing it to shrink.
Cut a narrow strip of dough.
Lay the strip around the edge of the pie pan.
Moisten the strip to stick.
Brush the bottom crust with egg white to prevent sogginess.
Add the filling to the pie.
Cover the filling with another sheet of pastry.
Moisten the edge of the top crust to adhere to the bottom crust.
Trim the edges lightly together.
Cut slits in the top crust for steam to escape.
Optionally, cut a thin piece of paste into a fancy shape for decoration.
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 + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure once water is added.
- Unsalted butter
- Stays in small pieces that melt in the oven, creating flaky layers and tenderness.
- Cold water
- Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together without becoming tough when kept cold.
- Egg white (in the method)
- Brushed on the bottom crust, it forms a thin barrier that limits soggy filling absorption.
The step that matters
Keep the butter in pieces and the water cold. Cold butter pieces stay solid until baking, then melt and release steam, creating flaky layers. If the butter softens or melts into the flour, the crust becomes dense and greasy rather than flaky.
“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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