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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A baked pastry filled with a sweet milk and flour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the choux paste

  1. Bring 1 cup of hot water and ½ cup of butter to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of sifted flour until a smooth paste forms.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Stir in 3 eggs until well combined.

Bake the puffs

  1. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets, ensuring they don't touch.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 25-30 minutes without opening the oven door frequently.

Make and fill

  1. Combine 1 cup of sweet milk, ½ cup of sugar, and 2 tablespoons of flour in a saucepan for the filling.

  2. Cook over medium heat until thickened.

  3. Add flavoring to taste.

  4. Carefully slit the puffs.

  5. Fill them with the cream.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the puffs as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the dough make a tender, flaky crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the starch paste that gives the puffs their structure.
Sweet milk
Provides moisture and body to the cream filling.

The step that matters

Avoid opening the oven door during baking. Opening the door early lets steam escape and cools the oven, so the puffs can collapse instead of rising and drying into hollow shells.

“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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