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Puff Paste for Pigeon Pie

A puff pastry dough made by layering butter and flour and rolling and folding to create layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Paste for Pigeon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the salt into the flour.

  2. Add cold water to make a stiff dough, similar in consistency to the butter.

  3. Knead the dough into a smooth ball and roll it out to the size of a meat plate.

Enclose the butter

  1. Flour a clean cloth, place the butter in it, and wring out excess moisture.

  2. Press the butter out to about half the size of the paste using minimal flour.

  3. Fold the edges of the paste over to wrap the butter inside.

  4. Chill in a cool place for 1 hour.

Laminate and finish

  1. Roll it out, turn it over, and roll it out again on the other side.

  2. Fold it into thirds and roll it out endways.

  3. Fold it end to end and roll it out again on the other side.

  4. Repeat the folding and rolling process for a total of 12 rollings.

  5. Roll out the paste to the desired thickness, and it is ready to use.

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).

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 stretch.
Butter
Forms separate solid layers that steam and lift the pastry as it bakes.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour to form the dough while keeping it cool and workable.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter and dough at a similar consistency while folding. If the butter is too soft it merges into the dough instead of forming distinct layers, and if too firm it cracks and tears the paste. Distinct layers are what make puff pastry rise.

“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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