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 ↓
Eough Puff Paste
Ingredients
Directions
Rub 2 ounces of butter into the flour until it resembles fine bread crumbs.
Mix with cold water to form a smooth, rather soft paste.
Roll the paste thin.
Shave the remaining butter into flakes and place in the center of the paste.
Fold the paste over the butter, meeting the edges, and smooth slightly with a rolling pin.
Fold the paste again lengthwise, with the butter sides folding over each other, leaving the ends free from butter.
Gently roll the ends to flatten them slightly.
Fold one end over the upper side one-third, and the other end under one-third, then flatten slightly with a rolling pin.
Set aside to cool and roll four 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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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
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