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Dessert

Puff Paste

Puff paste is a dough made from flour, butter, salt, egg yolks, and water, rolled and folded 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Ensure the flour is dry and sift it.

  2. Remove moisture from the butter by squeezing it in a clean cloth.

  3. Place the flour on a clean surface and mix in 2 ounces of butter lightly.

  4. Make a well in the center and add the egg yolks, salt, and water.

Make the dough

  1. Knead the mixture quickly until smooth, then roll it out to ½ inch thick.

  2. Roll the remaining butter into a ball and place it on the paste.

  3. Fold the paste over the butter and seal it well.

  4. Roll the paste thin, dusting with flour as needed.

  5. Fold the paste into thirds and roll it out again.

  6. If it's warm, chill the paste between turns.

  7. Repeat rolling and folding two more times for a total of six turns.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 dough once hydrated and worked into gluten.
Butter
Forms separate fat layers that turn into flaky layers as the pastry bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and help bind the dough together.
Water
Hydrates the flour so gluten can develop and the dough holds together.

The step that matters

Keeping the paste and butter cold between turns. If the butter softens and merges into the dough, the separate layers are lost and the pastry will not puff. Chilling between turns keeps the butter firm so it stays 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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