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
Divide the butter or lard into four equal portions.
Rub one portion into the flour and salt to make a short pastry.
Mix in cold water to form a stiff but smooth paste.
Turn the dough onto a floured board.
Laminate the dough
Roll it into a long strip.
Place small lumps of one of the remaining portions of butter or lard along the strip.
Fold the pastry into thirds.
Press the open edges together with a rolling pin.
Roll out again into a long strip.
Repeat the process until all butter is used, rolling out a total of four times.
If possible, let the pastry rest in a cool place for 15 minutes after each rolling.
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
- Forms the structure of the pastry once mixed with water.
- Butter or lard
- Forms layers between sheets of dough, which separate into flakes when baked.
- Cold water
- Binds the flour and fat into a dough while keeping the fat cold and firm.
The step that matters
Adding the butter in layers. Butter must stay cold and be spread in distinct lumps between rolled layers. If it softens and smears into the dough, the layers merge and the pastry loses its flakiness.
“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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