Puff pastry

It is not an ingredient, it is half the volume. Cold, or the layers merge.

Caramel, acid, and pastry underneath taking the syrup without going soggy.

Frangipane sets as the pastry rises, so the layers stay lifted above it.

Same Maillard family as the baked layers, just taken several minutes further.

Duxelles keeps the juice off the pastry; the crust is doing structural work.

Butter around butter, and the pastry stops the wheel running off the board.

Set custard between shattering sheets. The contrast is entirely textural.

The butter already smells faintly of it. This makes the claim explicit.

Brushed on the top only. Down the sides it welds the layers shut.

Nutty melting fat between layers already made of fat. Nobody objects.

Cooked dry to paste first, so the water leaves before the pastry meets it.

Salt fish on butter pastry: the crust is the only thing sweet in the mouthful.

Sour stone fruit collapses into the caramel and stops it turning sickly.

Fat wrapped in fat, and the crust is the only thing providing a texture.

Laminated butter needs a filling with no water in it, or the layers go soft.

Oxidised nutty wine reduced into the duxelles; the pastry carries it out.

Butter is the solvent and the layers are the delivery. Shave it warm.

Iodine cream on hot buttered layers reads like a beurre blanc that shattered.