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Preserve

Puff Pastry

A laminated dough made by layering butter and dough, folded and rolled to create flaky pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Pastry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Squeeze all the water out of the butter.

  2. Place the flour on a board and make a hollow in the center.

  3. Add a small piece of butter, the yolk of the egg, salt, lemon juice, and enough water to make a smooth paste. Work everything together and shape into a square piece.

Laminate the dough

  1. Roll out the paste lengthwise and lay the butter, pressed into a square, flat cake, on top. Fold the paste over the butter.

  2. If it's hot, set the paste aside for 10 minutes, then roll out again lengthwise, fold in three, and set aside for 15 minutes. Repeat this process twice.

  3. Keep the kitchen cool 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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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 paste once mixed with water.
Butter
Forms the separate layers that puff up as the pastry bakes.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough.

The step that matters

Keep the butter cold and the paste rested between folds. If the butter softens and blends into the dough, the layers merge and the pastry will not puff. Resting the paste between folds keeps the butter firm and the gluten relaxed, so the dough rolls out without tearing.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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