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
Sift the flour onto a pastry board and make a hole in the center.
Add 3 ounces of butter, salt, and water into the hole and work together until smooth.
Place the remaining 3 ounces of butter in the center and fold the paste over it.
Roll out the paste to a thin sheet on the board.
Fold and rest
Fold the paste in three folds and roll out again.
Repeat the folding and rolling process twice, allowing a 6-7 minute interval between each.
Flour the board if necessary, and the paste will be ready for use.
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 structure of the paste that holds the layers together.
- Butter
- Creates separate layers that puff apart as the pastry cooks, adding richness.
The step that matters
Keeping the butter in layers during folding. If the butter softens and blends into the dough, the layers will not form, so the pastry will not puff. Flouring the board lightly prevents sticking without adding too much flour to the dough.
“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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