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 ↓
Flaky Pastry
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dough
Mix the salt with the flour and sift it.
Rub one-third of the butter into the flour.
Mix the butter and flour with the water to form a stiff paste.
Flour the board and rolling pin.
Laminate the dough
Roll out the pastry until thin and narrow.
Divide the remaining butter into three parts.
Place one-third of the butter on the pastry in small pieces over one-third of the surface.
Lightly dredge the pastry with flour.
Fold the pastry in thirds.
Turn the pastry with the rough edges facing you.
Roll the pastry out again.
Add another third of the butter.
Dredge the pastry with flour.
Fold the pastry in thirds.
Roll the pastry out again.
Repeat this process one more time.
Roll the pastry into the desired shape and 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 dough once mixed with water.
- Butter
- Layered through the dough so it separates into flakes as the pastry bakes.
- Water
- Hydrates the flour so the paste can be rolled and folded.
The step that matters
Keep the butter in small pieces and rolling layers intact. Butter that softens or smears into the dough during rolling blends into the flour instead of forming separate layers, so the pastry loses its flakiness. Chilling the dough between rolls helps keep the fat solid.
“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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