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 ↓
Plain Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the butter
Wash butter, pat, and form in a circular piece.
Make the dough
Add salt to flour, and work in lard with tips of fingers or case knife.
Moisten dough with cold water.
Toss dough on board dusted with flour, pat, and roll out; fold in butter as for puff pastry, pat, and roll out.
Fold dough to make three layers, turn halfway, pat, roll out; repeat.
Store and bake
If not used immediately, wrap in cheesecloth, put in covered tin, keep in cold place, not in direct contact with ice.
Bake in a moderate oven.
Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)
Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 1 cup (125g) all-purpose | 455 |
| Lard | 1 tbsp (12.8g) | 115 |
| Butter | 1 tbsp (14g) | 102 |
| Salt | 1 tsp (6g) | 0 |
| Water | not in our table | 0 |
One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.
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. See the original page.
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
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the dough once moistened and rolled.
- Lard
- Works into the flour to create tender, flaky layers by keeping fat separate from gluten.
- Butter
- Folded in during rolling to add flavor and separate layers that puff when baked.
- Cold water
- Binds the flour and fat into a dough without melting the fat.
The step that matters
Keeping the dough cold while rolling and folding. Solid fat pieces trapped between layers of dough melt in the oven and leave air pockets, which create flakiness. If the fat softens or melts into the dough during handling, the layers blend together and the pastry turns dense rather than flaky.
“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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