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Preserve

Puff Paste

A dough made by layering butter and flour, folded and chilled to create flaky pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Puff Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the cream of tartar into the flour.

  2. Rub in half the butter.

  3. Add cold water to form a dough like ordinary pastry.

Laminate

  1. Roll out the dough and spread the remaining butter on top.

  2. Fold the dough over and roll it out again.

  3. Repeat this process two or three times, beating with a rolling pin until the butter is incorporated.

  4. Fold the dough and refrigerate for a few hours before using.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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
Forms separate fat layers that turn into flaky layers as the pastry is folded and baked.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough, which can help keep the gluten tender and the pastry light.

The step that matters

Repeating the folds and rolls with the butter. If the butter softens or melts into the dough, it blends in rather than staying in distinct layers, and the pastry loses its flakiness. Keeping the dough and butter cool and rolling gently helps the layers stay separate.

“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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