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
Place the paste on a clean, dry board and roll it into a perfect square.
Dust the surface with a little flour and place small pieces of butter on it, leaving a 1-inch margin around the edges.
Moisten the margin with water using a feather.
Fold the corners of the square towards the center and seal the moistened sides.
Dust the surface with flour and roll the paste evenly without rolling backwards.
Continue rolling until the paste is at least three times its original length.
Divide the paste into two parts, letting one half rest while you work with the other.
Fold the portion in hand into three folds, with open ends facing the sides of the board.
Turn the paste and bring the open ends in front of you, dust the surface, and roll again.
Repeat the folding and rolling process nine times or until the desired flakiness is achieved.
Roll out the paste to the thickness of a shilling and layer it for your dish.
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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