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Dessert

Very Good Puff-paste

A dough made from flour, butter, and water, rolled and folded to create layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Very Good Puff-paste

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Weigh the flour accurately.

  2. Weigh the butter accurately.

  3. Squeeze the butter to extract moisture.

  4. Wring the butter in a clean cloth.

  5. Sift the flour to ensure it is dry.

  6. Mix the flour with ½ cup of water using a knife until smooth.

  7. Roll out the paste to about 1 inch thick.

Laminate the butter

  1. Break 4 ounces of butter into small pieces.

  2. Place the butter pieces on the paste.

  3. Dust the paste with a little flour.

  4. Fold the paste over.

  5. Roll out the paste again.

  6. Add 4 ounces of butter.

  7. Roll out the paste.

  8. Repeat the previous two steps until you've done this four times.

Finish and bake

  1. Dust flour on the paste.

  2. Dust flour on the rolling pin.

  3. Handle the paste lightly and avoid pressing too hard.

  4. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) before baking.

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).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and holds the layers together.
Unsalted butter
Forms separate fat layers that turn to steam in the oven, lifting the dough into flaky sheets.
Water
Hydrates the flour so it forms a smooth, workable paste.

The step that matters

Handle the paste lightly. Pressing hard or overworking the dough develops excess gluten and softens the butter into the dough, which toughens the pastry and blurs the layers needed for rise.

“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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