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Dessert

Chopped Puff-paste

A dough made by chopping butter into flour, then incorporating egg and liquid, rolled and folded to create puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Chopped Puff-paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the liquid

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Mix in the ice water and lemon juice.

Cut in the butter

  1. Chop the butter and flour together until the butter is in pea-sized lumps.

  2. Gradually add the egg mixture while chopping continuously.

  3. Once all the liquid is incorporated, sprinkle flour on a clean surface and turn the paste onto it.

Fold and chill

  1. Roll and fold the paste like puff pastry, repeating this process three to four times.

  2. Chill the paste in the refrigerator before using for best results.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. 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 structure of the dough as it hydrates and is worked.
Butter
Stays in solid pieces that create separate layers, which give puff pastry its flakiness.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Ice water
Adds moisture while keeping the dough cold so the butter does not melt.
Sugar
Adds mild sweetness and helps the pastry brown during baking.

The step that matters

Chopping the butter into pea-sized lumps. If the butter is worked in too far or softens, it blends into the flour instead of staying in pieces. Solid butter creates separate layers that steam apart in the oven, so the pastry rises flaky. Keeping everything cold helps preserve these pieces.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg. 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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