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Puff Paste

Puff pastry dough made from flour, sugar, egg yolks, ice water, and butter, folded and chilled.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sprinkle a little sugar over the flour in a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with a little ice water and pour into the center of the flour.

  3. Work the mixture into a firm paste, adding more water as necessary.

  4. Divide the butter into three parts.

Laminate and chill

  1. Roll out the paste and spread one part of the butter on half of it.

  2. Fold the other half over and roll out again, repeating until all the butter is incorporated.

  3. Chill the paste on ice for 15 to 20 minutes.

  4. Roll out the paste three more times, each time in the opposite direction.

  5. Chill again until cold before using.

  6. Store in the refrigerator for several days, but do not freeze.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the paste once mixed with liquid.
Butter
Creates separate fat layers that puff into flaky layers when baked.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the firm paste together.
Ice water
Hydrates the flour while keeping the paste cold so the butter stays firm.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter firm while rolling and folding. If the butter softens and blends into the paste, the separate layers are lost and the pastry will not puff. Chilling between rolls keeps the butter in distinct 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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