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
Weigh equal amounts of flour and butter.
Rub more than half of the flour into one-third of the butter.
Add enough cold water to form a stiff paste.
Work the mixture until the butter is fully combined with the flour.
Shape it into a round ball and beat it with a rolling pin.
Laminate
Dust the dough and the rolling pin with flour.
Roll it out evenly on a floured surface.
Dot the surface with small pieces of butter and dust with flour.
Fold in the sides and roll it up, dusting with flour again.
Beat it lightly and roll it out again, using flour to prevent sticking.
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 gluten network that gives the dough its structure and layers.
- Butter
- Creates separate fat layers that turn into flaky layers as the pastry bakes.
- Cold water
- Brings the flour together into a stiff paste that can be rolled and folded.
The step that matters
Keep the butter cold and in separate layers. If the butter softens and blends into the dough, it will not form distinct layers, so the pastry loses its flakiness. Rolling and folding in flour keeps the fat in sheets.
“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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