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English Puff-paste

A laminated dough made by folding butter into flour and water, rolled and folded repeatedly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, break the butter into small pieces.

  2. Add the flour and a pinch of salt, then mix in enough cold water to form a dough.

  3. Knead the dough quickly and lightly until smooth and pliable.

  4. Roll the dough out to ¾ inch thick.

Laminate the dough

  1. Place 6 ounces (¾ cup) of butter in small pieces on the dough.

  2. Fold the dough over the butter like a blanket pudding.

  3. Roll it out again and add another 6 ounces (¾ cup) of butter, repeating the folding and rolling process. Dust with flour each time you roll out the dough.

  4. Add 6 more ounces (¾ cup) of butter and roll the dough thin, folding the ends into the middle.

  5. Repeat this process three or four times.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Forms separate fat layers between dough sheets, which help create a flaky texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure of the dough, which holds the layers together during rolling.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour so the dough can form and gluten can develop.

The step that matters

Rolling and folding with the butter. The butter should stay cold and pliable so it spreads into even layers instead of breaking through the dough. Those separate layers of fat and dough are what lift and flake the pastry as it bakes.

“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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