undercrust

plural undercrusts

1. cookingA crust that forms the bottom of a pie, tart or other dish; a layer of pastry that supports the filling.

   In the middle ages, our forefathers found themselves deficient in plates and so, for a substitute, an undercrust of bread served as a plate.

   1919 September, “How Some of Our Popular Dishes Got their Names”, in Gas Logic, volume 26, number 3, page 13

   2 more examples

   Mr. Gurney's dig at our pie referred to the soggy undercrust so many of our American cooks persist in making. The English never have an undercrust to their pies, one of the few respects, it seems to me, in which English cooking, which is generally atrocious, is superior to our own, which also belongs in many respects to the atrocious order.

   1922, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Theodore Stanton, Harriot Stanton Blatch, Elizabeth Cady Stanton: As Revealed in Her Letters & Diary, page 82

   To study the effect of several factors on the soaking of the fruit into the undercrust, it was frozen before the filling was added as well as after the entire pie was made; the unfrozen undercrust was brushed with egg white, with fat, with sugar or with flour.

   1947, Faith Fenton, “Frozen Cooked Foods”, in Refrigeration Engineering, volume 53, number 2, page 109

2. The layer of material located beneath the crust of a planet or moon.

   It must therefore form the undercrust of all Gallia.

   1878, Jules Verne, To the Sun?: A Journey Through Planetary Space, page 327

   2 more examples

   The deposit consists of a hard crust of fairly pure halite as much as 40 cm thick overlying an undercrust of mixed salts and wet sand 30 cm thick; below this undercrust at an average depth of about 60 cm is the brine level.

   1970, Gus Hossein Goudarzi, Geology and Mineral Resources of Libya--a Reconnaissance, page 85

   The differential geochemical character of crust and undercrust is reflected in elemntal concentrations (right panel), where the relative size of the font for each element denotes relative enrichment or depletion between crust and undercrusts.

   2016, Bettina Weber, Burkhard Büdel, Jayne Belnap, Biological Soil Crusts: An Organizing Principle in Drylands, page 242

   Synonyms: subcrust