Why it works: Butter and flour 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
Prepare the butter and dough
Wash the butter, pat and fold until no water remains.
Reserve 2 tablespoons of butter and shape the rest into a circular piece ½ inch thick on a floured board.
Work the reserved butter into the flour with your fingertips.
Moisten with cold water to form a dough, turn onto a slightly floured board, and knead for 1 minute.
Cover with a towel and let stand for 5 minutes.
Laminate the dough
Pat and roll the dough to ¼ inch thick, keeping it wider than long with square corners.
Place the butter in the center of the lower half of the dough and fold the upper half over it.
Press the edges firmly to enclose as much air as possible.
Fold the right side of the dough over the butter and the left side under it.
Turn the dough halfway around, cover, and let stand for 5 minutes.
Pat and roll the dough to ¼ inch thick, lifting often to prevent sticking and dusting with flour as needed.
Fold from the ends towards the center to make 3 layers, cover, and let stand for 5 minutes.
Repeat this process twice, turning the dough halfway around each time before rolling.
After the fourth rolling, fold from the ends to the center and double to make 4 layers.
Chill and store
Chill in a cold place, or wrap in a towel and place between pans of crushed ice if necessary.
To store for several days, wrap in a napkin, place in a tin pail, cover tightly, and keep in a cold place.
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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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter and flour 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
- Butter
- Forms cold layers that separate the dough, creating flakiness as it melts and steam puffs the pastry.
- Pastry flour
- Provides the structure that holds the layers together while the dough is rolled and folded.
- Cold water
- Moistens the flour to form a dough that can be rolled and folded into layers.
The step that matters
Keep the butter and dough cold while rolling. If the butter softens and blends into the dough, the layers merge and the pastry loses its flakiness. Chilling between turns keeps the butter in distinct sheets.
“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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