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Rich Puff Paste

A layered dough made by mixing flour and butter, adding water, and repeatedly rolling and folding to create a rich pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Rich Puff Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and butter, mixing until crumbly.

  2. Add just enough water to form a stiff paste.

Laminate and fold

  1. Roll out the dough and layer slices of butter on top.

  2. Fold the ends in and roll thin; repeat this process twice.

  3. Roll and fold the dough three to four times.

Variations

  1. For a less rich paste, mix 1 pound of flour with ¼ pound of butter and enough water to form a paste with 1 beaten egg.

  2. For a richer paste, combine 1 pound of dried flour, 6 ounces of butter, and 1 tablespoon of sugar, adding water to form a stiff paste.

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).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the thin layers of dough together.
Unsalted butter
Forms separate fat layers that create flaky texture as the dough is rolled and folded.
Egg
Adds richness and structure to the paste in the less rich version.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and promotes browning in the richer version.

The step that matters

Layering the butter and folding. Butter must stay in distinct cold layers between dough sheets. If it softens and blends into the dough, the flaky layers are lost, so keep the dough and butter cool while rolling and folding.

“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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