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 ↓
Kemaeks on Puff Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Sift the flour and set it on the table.
Wash the butter, press it in a towel to remove water, and chill it on ice.
Prepare plates by dusting them with flour and wiping off excess.
Measure the flour and weigh the butter.
Cut the butter into thin slices and stir it into the flour without fully incorporating.
Add enough ice water to moisten the mixture, leaving it a rough mass.
Dust the paste board with flour, take a handful of dough, and roll it out as thin as possible.
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
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