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Dessert

Puff Paste for Pies

A dough made from pastry flour, butter, salt, sugar, and ice water, folded and rolled to create layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 for Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash hands with soap and water, then dip them in hot and cold water.

  2. Rinse a large bowl with boiling water, then with cold water, and fill it halfway with cold water.

  3. Wash the butter in cold water until it is light and waxy, then shape it into two thin cakes and place in ice water to harden.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the salt and sugar with the flour.

  2. Rub one-third of the butter into the flour using your hands.

  3. Add the ice water and stir quickly with a knife until the mixture forms a smooth ball.

  4. Lightly sprinkle flour on a board and turn the paste onto it.

  5. Pound the paste lightly with a rolling pin without breaking it, rolling from you and to one side.

Laminate and fold

  1. When the paste is about ¼ inch thick, wipe the remaining butter, break it into bits, and spread it on the paste.

  2. Sprinkle lightly with flour, then fold the paste from each side so the edges meet.

  3. Fold from the ends without having them meet, then double the paste, pound lightly, and roll to about ⅓ inch thick.

  4. Repeat the folding and rolling process three times for pies and six times for vol-au-vents or tarts.

  5. Place the rolled paste in the ice to harden for at least one hour before use.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Pastry flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the layers of dough together.
Butter
Forms separate layers that puff into flakes as water turns to steam in the oven.
Ice water
Hydrates the flour while keeping the dough cold so the butter stays in solid pieces.
Salt
Seasons the dough and strengthens its gluten structure.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter and dough cold while folding. If the butter softens and melts into the dough, it is absorbed by the flour instead of forming separate layers, so the pastry will not puff evenly. Chilling between rounds keeps the butter in solid 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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