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Dessert

Cream Puff Filling

A sweet custard-like filling for cream puffs made with milk, sugar, butter, cornstarch, egg yolks, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Puff Filling

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little cold milk and mix with the egg yolks.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the remaining milk, sugar, and butter; bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the yolk and cornstarch mixture and continue stirring until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat, stir in the salt, and add flavoring as desired.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as they set with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, stable filling as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into a custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds body to the custard.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, smoother mouthfeel and a rich flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolk and cornstarch mixture into the boiling milk. Cornstarch must be kept moving as it heats, or it can clump and scorch on the pan bottom. Continued stirring until thickened lets the starch gelatinize evenly, giving a smooth filling.

“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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