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Preserve

Puff Paste

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

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

Make the dough

  1. Sprinkle salt and sugar over the flour.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Stir in 5 teaspoons of ice water.

  4. Pour the egg mixture into the center of the flour while stirring with your fingers until well mixed.

  5. Work the mixture until smooth.

  6. Roll it into a large sheet.

Laminate the butter

  1. Mash the butter in ice water to extract the salt, ensuring it doesn't get too soft.

  2. Divide the dough into 3 equal parts.

  3. Spread one part of butter over half of the crust. Fold the other half over the butter. Fold from right to left. Roll it out again.

  4. Spread the second portion of butter. Fold. Roll again.

  5. Repeat with the third portion of butter. Roll in a different direction each time.

  6. Roll out the dough 2 or 3 more times.

Rest and finish

  1. Roll it loosely on the rolling pin. Unroll it in the desired direction.

  2. Chill the paste in a covered dish on ice.

  3. Roll it out for immediate use.

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the layers of dough together.
Butter
Creates separate layers that steam apart during baking, giving the pastry its rise and flakiness.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough into a smooth, workable mass.
Ice water
Keeps the dough cold and limits gluten development so the pastry stays tender.

The step that matters

Keeping the butter cold and firm during folding. If the butter softens and blends into the dough, the separate layers are lost and the pastry will not puff. Cold dough and butter keep the fat in distinct sheets that create steam pockets in the oven.

“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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