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
Prepare the dough
Sift the flour twice, reserving a little for rolling.
Mix the flour with cold water to form a stiff paste.
Knead the paste well and roll it out several times.
Laminate with butter
Wash the butter and divide it into four parts.
Place one part of the butter in small pieces on the pastry. Fold the pastry over the butter and roll it out until well mixed.
Repeat with the remaining portions of butter, rolling each time.
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
- All-purpose flour
- Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it is rolled and folded.
- Unsalted butter
- Forms separate layers within the dough that create flakiness as the butter melts and steam lifts the layers.
- Cold water
- Hydrates the flour to form the dough, and keeping it cold helps the butter stay solid between layers.
The step that matters
Keep the butter separate from the dough while rolling. If the butter softens and mixes fully into the dough, the separate layers are lost and the pastry will not rise flaky. Keeping the dough and butter cool between rolls preserves the layers.
“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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