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
Make the dough
Sift the flour onto a board and make a hole in the center.
Add 3 ounces of butter, salt, and water into the hole, then work together until smooth.
Laminate
Place another 3 ounces of butter in the center and fold the paste over it.
Roll out the paste to a thin layer, then fold it in thirds and roll it out again.
Repeat this process twice, allowing 6-7 minutes between each rolling, flouring the board as needed.
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 gluten network that gives the pastry its structure.
- Butter
- Forms separate layers that create flakiness as the pastry bakes.
- Water
- Hydrates the flour so the dough can form and bind together.
The step that matters
Folding in the butter layers. The butter must stay cold and in distinct sheets between dough layers. If it softens and blends into the dough, the layers melt together and the pastry loses its flakiness.
“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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