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 ↓
Flaky Pastry
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Wash the butter and set aside as for puff pastry.
In a bowl, combine flour and salt.
Work the shortening into the flour mixture with a knife or your fingertips until it resembles meal.
Gradually add cold water and mix to form a paste with a knife.
Knead slightly, cover, and let stand for five minutes.
Laminate the pastry
Pat with a rolling pin and roll out into a rectangular sheet.
Fold in the butter as you would for puff pastry.
Give the pastry two or three turns, allowing it to rest for five minutes between each turn.
Use or store
Use the pastry immediately or cover tightly to store for future use.
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
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Forms the structure that holds the thin layers of the pastry together.
- Shortening
- Coats the flour particles so the dough bakes up tender and flaky rather than tough.
- Butter
- Creates separate layers of fat that puff apart in the oven and add rich flavor.
The step that matters
Folding in the butter and giving the turns. The butter must stay cold and the dough must rest between turns. If the butter softens and smears into the dough, the distinct flaky layers are lost, and the gluten, given rest, relaxes so the pastry does not shrink or toughen.
“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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