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
Mix the flour and lard thoroughly with your hands.
Add the cold water and mix with a spoon.
Roll out the dough.
Add bits of butter, using about a third of it. Sprinkle with flour. Roll up the dough.
Roll out again. Add the remaining butter. Sprinkle with flour. Roll up.
Roll out thin. Sprinkle with flour. Roll up again.
Set aside for about 30 minutes in a cool place.
Fold and shape
Roll out thin. Fold once. Roll in the opposite direction.
Cut into strips ½ inch wide. Moisten the edges. Wind around tin cornucopias.
Bake
Bake until golden.
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 structure of the dough that holds the layers together.
- Lard
- Creates solid fat layers that separate dough sheets, producing flakiness when baked.
- Butter
- Adds fat layers and flavor, and steam from its water helps the layers puff.
- Cold water
- Hydrates the flour to form a workable dough without warming the fat.
The step that matters
Keeping the dough and fat cold during rolling. If the fat softens and melts into the dough, the separate layers blend together and the pastry will not puff. Chilling between turns keeps the fat in distinct layers that release steam in the oven.
“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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