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Puff Paste

A dough made by encasing butter in flour and repeatedly folding 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

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour onto a pastry board and make a well in the center.

  2. Add the salt, lemon juice, and cold water.

  3. Knead the mixture thoroughly and roll it into an oblong strip.

Laminate

  1. Knead the butter in a cloth to remove moisture and shape it into a flat cake.

  2. Place the butter in the center of the paste, wet the edges with cold water, and fold over to enclose the butter.

  3. Roll it out carefully, fold it into thirds, and roll it out again; repeat this 4-5 times, resting the paste in a cool place for 15 minutes between each turn.

  4. Allow the paste to stand for at least 30 minutes before using.

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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 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

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Butter
Forms separate layers that create flakiness when the dough is rolled and folded.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour to form the dough while keeping the butter firm.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter and paste cold during folding. If the butter softens and blends into the dough, it will not form distinct layers, so the pastry loses its flakiness. Resting the paste between turns keeps the fat firm and the layers separate.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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