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English Puff-paste

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 ↓

English Puff-paste

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, break the flour and mix in 8 ounces of butter and a pinch of salt.

  2. Add enough cold water to form a dough and work it quickly until smooth and pliable.

  3. Roll the dough to ¾ inch thick and place 6 ounces of butter in small pieces on top.

  4. Fold the dough over the butter like a blanket pudding and roll it out again.

  5. Add another 6 ounces of butter, repeat the rolling, and dust with flour each time.

  6. Add the final 6 ounces of butter and roll the dough thin, folding the ends into the middle.

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

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