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Common Puff Paste, for Pies

A dough made from flour, lard, butter, salt, and cold water, folded and rolled to create layers for pies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Common Puff Paste, for Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Place the flour on a clean surface or in a bowl and make a hollow in the center.

  2. Work the lard and salt into the flour until well mixed.

  3. Add enough cold water to bind the mixture together.

  4. Dust a clean surface with flour and roll out the paste to ½ inch thickness.

Laminate with butter

  1. Divide the butter into three parts.

  2. Spread one part evenly over the paste. Fold the paste. Dust with flour. Roll it out again.

  3. Spread another portion of butter over the paste. Fold. Roll again.

  4. Repeat the process with the remaining butter.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

  1. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Sifted wheat flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Lard
Creates fat layers that keep the dough tender and flaky.
Butter
Forms separate layers that steam and puff the pastry during baking.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour so the dough binds together.

The step that matters

Rolling and folding the butter layers. If the butter softens and blends into the dough, the separate layers are lost and the pastry will not puff. Keeping the dough and butter cool and rolling evenly preserves the layers.

“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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