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Dessert

Puff Paste

A dough for puff pastry made with pastry flour, cold butter, egg yolks, salt, ice water, and a little sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

  1. Sift the flour.

  2. Weigh the flour into an earthen bowl.

  3. Sprinkle a little sugar and a pinch of salt over the flour.

  4. Beat the egg yolks.

  5. Add 3 teaspoons of ice water.

  6. Stir the mixture into the flour using your fingertips.

  7. Check if the mixture is too dry. Add more water to form a stiff dough.

Add the butter

  1. Add ⅓ of the cold butter.

  2. Work the butter into the dough until all water and salt are incorporated.

  3. Spread the butter evenly on the dough.

  4. Mix the dough thoroughly.

  5. Chill the dough on ice for a while.

  6. Repeat the butter addition process until all butter is used.

Chill and bake

  1. Roll the dough.

  2. Place the dough on a plate to chill until nearly frozen.

  3. Cover the dough with crushed ice.

  4. Let the dough sit for an hour.

  5. Cut the dough into the desired shape.

  6. Bake the cut pieces.

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Pastry flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Cold butter
Forms separate layers that puff into flaky texture when baked.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping the dough bind and brown.
Ice water
Hydrates the flour to form a cohesive dough while keeping the butter cold.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter cold while incorporating it. If the butter softens and blends into the dough instead of staying in distinct pieces, it will not form separate layers, so the pastry will not puff and flake properly. Chilling between additions helps keep the butter firm.

“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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