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Cream for Cream Puffs

A custard-like cream used as filling for cream puffs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Cream for Cream Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk and half of the sugar in a saucepan until scalded.

  2. Beat the remaining sugar with the egg yolks in a bowl until well combined.

  3. Once the milk is scalded, mix in the egg yolk mixture.

  4. Stir the mixture on the heat until it begins to thicken.

Finish

  1. Remove from heat, cool, and add flavoring of your choice.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the yolks blend smoothly into the mixture.
Corn starch
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the cream its body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the cream as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring while the mixture thickens. Corn starch needs heat and constant stirring to swell and thicken evenly. Stopping too early leaves the cream thin, while overheating or leaving it still can scorch the bottom or curdle the yolks.

“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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