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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A light pastry made from flour, butter, water, eggs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Cream Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, butter, and salt.

  2. Pour in the boiling water and beat lightly.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a rice boiler and cook over low heat until thick, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  5. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto a buttered baking sheet or gem pans.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill with custard filling that has cooled slightly.

  2. Serve immediately.

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 + 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
Provides the starch structure that holds the puffs once baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the dough stay tender.
Boiling water
Hydrates the starch and, with heat, gelatinizes it into a thick paste.
Eggs
Add moisture and structure and help the dough puff and set as it bakes.

The step that matters

Cook the paste until thick. Cooking the flour mixture until thick gelatinizes the starch so it can hold its shape. Under-cooked paste lacks structure and may collapse or fail to puff. Stirring constantly prevents scorching on the bottom of the pan.

“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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