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 ↓
Plain Pastry
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Mix the butter or shortening with twice the amount of flour.
Use a knife to combine half the shortening with the flour.
Add cold water gradually to form a paste that can be rolled out.
Laminate and roll
Roll the paste to about ½ inch thick and place the remaining shortening in flakes on top.
Dust a little flour over the shortening, fold the pastry to enclose it, and roll it out again.
Repeat the folding and rolling process several times.
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 or lard or suet
- Fat coats the flour and, left in pieces, creates separate layers that make the pastry flaky.
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the gluten network that holds the paste together so it can be rolled out and folded.
The step that matters
Folding and rolling the flakes of fat into the dough. Fat kept in separate flakes creates layers that separate as the pastry bakes. If the fat softens or is worked into the flour, the layers are lost and the pastry becomes dense. Overworking the dough also toughens it by developing too much gluten.
“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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