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Dessert

Puff-paste

A laminated dough made with flour, butter, eggs, water, and cream of tartar, chilled and folded repeatedly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Puff-paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix cream of tartar with the flour.

  2. Make a dough with the water.

  3. Add the eggs.

Laminate the dough

  1. Roll out the dough.

  2. Fold in the butter.

  3. Roll out again.

  4. Wash the dough with water.

  5. Lap it, then roll.

  6. Fold over again, then roll.

Chill and turn

  1. Place the dough on a pan and chill in a cold place for 1 hour.

  2. After chilling, give another turn as before.

  3. Let it stand in a cold place for another hour.

  4. Turn as before.

  5. Keep it chilled for a short while 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Strong flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and stretch.
Solid butter
Stays in separate cold layers between sheets of dough, creating flakiness as it melts in the oven.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter cold between turns. If the butter softens and merges into the dough, the separate layers are lost and the pastry will not puff. Chilling firms the butter again so each turn keeps distinct layers of fat and dough.

“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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