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
In a bowl, mix half of the butter with the flour and just enough ice water to form a dough.
Laminate
Roll the dough out thinly and dot with half of the remaining butter in small pieces.
Dredge the buttered surface with flour, then roll the dough up tightly.
Roll it out again until thin, then add the rest of the butter and roll up as before.
Repeat this process until all the butter is incorporated.
Keep the dough cool by placing it in the refrigerator until ready to 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
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the structure of the dough that holds the layers together.
- Unsalted butter
- Forms separate solid layers that produce flakiness as the water in the butter turns to steam.
- Ice water
- Hydrates the flour to form a dough while keeping the butter cold and in distinct pieces.
The step that matters
Keep the dough cool. If the butter softens and melts into the dough, the layers blend together instead of staying separate, so the pastry loses its flakiness. Chilling between rolls keeps the butter solid.
“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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