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 ↓
Puff Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Sift the flour and set aside some for sprinkling and rolling.
Wash all the salt from the butter and divide it into four parts.
Mix one fourth of the butter with the flour to form a stiff dough using a knife.
Sprinkle flour on a clean surface and flour the rolling pin.
Roll the dough into a thin sheet.
Place small pieces of one sixth of the remaining butter at equal distances on the dough.
Fold the dough over the butter, sprinkle with flour, and roll again.
Repeat the process until all the butter is used.
Divide the dough into pieces for pies, roll each piece, and place in buttered pans.
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
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