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Dessert

Puff Paste

A dough made from flour, butter, lard, salt, and ice water, layered and folded to create flaky pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Puff Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Chop the lard into the flour until fine.

  2. Add the ice water and mix until combined.

Laminate

  1. Flour a board well and roll out the dough.

  2. Divide the butter into three equal parts and sprinkle one third over the dough in tiny pieces.

  3. Fold the dough up and pound it, then roll it out again.

  4. Repeat the butter addition and rolling process three times.

  5. Roll out the dough thin and cut into desired pieces.

  6. Chill thoroughly before using.

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 structure that holds the layers of dough together.
Butter
Forms separate layers that puff up as moisture turns to steam in the oven.
Lard
Keeps the dough tender and flaky by coating flour particles and limiting gluten development.
Ice water
Hydrates the flour while staying cold, keeping the fat solid so layers stay distinct.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter in tiny, separate pieces while rolling. If the butter softens or melts into the dough, it blends in instead of forming layers, so the pastry will not puff. Keeping the dough cold between folds keeps the fat solid and the layers intact.

“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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