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Dessert

Puff Paste for Pies

A dough made from pastry flour, butter, salt, sugar, and ice water, folded and rolled to create layers for pies.

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 for Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash your hands with soap and water, then dip them in very hot water followed by cold water.

  2. Rinse a large bowl with boiling water, then with cold water, and fill it halfway with cold water.

  3. Wash the butter in the cold water, working it until light and waxy.

  4. Shape the butter into two thin cakes and place them in a pan of ice water to harden.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the salt and sugar with the flour.

  2. Rub one-third of the butter into the flour using your hands.

  3. Add the ice water and stir quickly with a knife until the mixture forms a smooth ball.

  4. Lightly sprinkle flour on a board and turn the paste onto it.

  5. Pound the paste lightly with a rolling pin without breaking it.

Fold and roll

  1. Roll the paste to about ¼ inch thick, then spread the remaining butter in bits on top and sprinkle lightly with flour.

  2. Fold the paste one-third from each side so the edges meet, then fold from the ends without having them meet.

  3. Double the paste, pound lightly, and roll it to about ⅓ inch thick.

  4. Repeat the folding and rolling process three times for pies and six times for vol-au-vents or tarts.

  5. Place the rolled paste in the ice to harden for at least one hour before use.

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).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Pastry flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the flaky layers together.
Butter
Stays solid between dough layers and steams during baking, creating flakiness.
Ice water
Hydrates the flour while keeping the butter cold and firm.
Salt
Seasons the dough and strengthens its gluten structure.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter and dough cold. If the butter softens and blends into the flour, it will not form separate layers, so the pastry will lose its flakiness. Chilling between folds keeps the butter in distinct sheets that puff as steam forms 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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