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
In a bowl, rub 6 tablespoons of butter into ½ pound of fine flour.
Add enough pure water to form a paste.
Laminate and rest
Roll out the paste and spread 2 more tablespoons of butter on top.
Fold the paste and roll it out again with the same amount of butter.
Sprinkle a little flour over the paste and roll it out one last time.
Set the rolled paste aside in a cool place for about 1 hour.
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
- Fine flour
- Provides the structure that holds the layers together as the dough is rolled.
- Butter
- Forms separate layers that create flakiness when the butter separates the dough sheets.
The step that matters
Rolling and folding with butter. Butter must stay in distinct layers within the dough. If it softens and blends into the paste, the separate layers that give puff pastry its lift are lost.
“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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