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Dessert

A Galette

A pastry dough made from butter, flour, salt, egg yolks, and cream or water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Galette

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, work the butter into the flour until well combined. Add the salt and mix.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the egg yolks with the cream or water.

  4. Add the egg mixture to the flour and butter, mixing to form a paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into a round shape, about ¾ inch thick.

  2. Score the top in small diamond shapes and brush with egg yolk.

  3. Bake for about 30 minutes or until golden.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour particles and creating flaky, short texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure as its proteins form gluten when mixed with liquid.
Egg yolks
Add fat and emulsifiers that bind the dough and enrich its color and flavor.
Heavy cream or water
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together into a workable paste.

The step that matters

Working the butter into the flour. If the butter is over-worked or melts, it blends fully into the flour and the dough loses its flaky layers, becoming dense rather than tender.

“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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