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
Sift the flour and dry it. Place it in a bowl.
Add the strained juice of ½ lemon and enough cold water to form a damp paste.
Turn the paste onto a floured board and knead with your palms until smooth.
Flour a rolling pin and roll the paste to about ¼ inch thick.
Press moisture from the butter using a clean cloth and place it in the center of the paste.
Seal the butter inside the paste and roll it out to about 1.5 feet long, avoiding rolling over the edges.
Fold the paste into thirds and place it on a floured surface. Chill for 15 minutes.
Roll it out again, folding in thirds each time, and chill for 15 minutes after each of the first two rolls.
After the seventh roll, brush with a little lemon juice, fold in thirds, let it rest briefly, and roll to the desired size and thickness.
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).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 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
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Coconutfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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