Skip to main content
Dessert

Rough Puff Paste

A dough made from flour, butter, lemon juice, egg yolk, and cold water, rolled and folded to create a flaky pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Rough Puff Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour into a bowl.

  2. Cut the butter into the flour using a knife.

  3. Beat the yolk of the egg.

  4. Add lemon juice and cold water.

  5. Gradually mix the egg mixture into the flour until a dough forms that doesn't stick to the bowl.

  6. Place the dough on a floured surface.

Laminate the pastry

  1. Roll the dough out four or five times, always rolling in the same direction.

  2. Fold the pastry into thirds.

  3. Turn the pastry so the rough edges face you.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 liquid.
Butter
Creates fat layers that separate the dough, giving flakiness when rolled and folded.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the dough together.
Cold water
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together while keeping the butter firm.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter cold. If the butter softens or melts into the flour, it cannot form separate layers, so the pastry becomes dense rather than flaky. Cold water and a cool working surface help keep the fat solid during rolling and folding.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More puff pastry recipes

Dough 47Jam Sandwiches 11Cheese 10Rings 10Jam Squares 9Meat Rolls 8 See all 341 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes