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
Prepare
Wash all the salt out of the butter.
Cut 2 ounces of butter into the flour.
Add enough cold water to moisten and form a dough.
Make the paste in a cool place.
Laminate and rest
Roll the dough into a sheet and place the remaining butter over it.
Roll out the dough four times.
Let it rest for one hour before using.
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
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Forms the dough's structure and gives the pastry its body once moistened with water.
- Butter
- Forms separate fat layers between the dough sheets, which keep the pastry flaky and tender.
The step that matters
Roll out the dough four times with the butter. The butter must stay cold and in distinct sheets rather than blending into the dough. Separate layers of fat are what create the flaky texture of puff pastry.
“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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