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How to Make Cream Puffs

Light choux pastry puffs baked from a water, butter and flour batter with eggs, filled with a thickened milk custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

How to Make Cream Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux batter

  1. Put half a pint of water and four level tablespoonfuls of butter into a saucepan.

  2. Sift and measure half a pint of flour.

  3. When the water is boiling and the butter thoroughly melted, turn in the flour hastily and stir rapidly over the fire.

  4. Take from the fire and stand aside until partly cool.

  5. Break an egg into a cup, then turn it into the batter and beat for a moment.

  6. Add another egg and beat thoroughly, then add a fourth, breaking each into the cup first.

  7. After the last egg, beat the batter for five minutes.

  8. Stand the batter aside in a cool place for an hour and a half.

Bake the puffs

  1. Drop by tablespoonfuls into greased shallow pans.

  2. Leave room between the puffs for swelling.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven for thirty-five or forty minutes.

Make the filling

  1. To make the filling, put half a pint of milk in a double boiler.

  2. Mix a tablespoonful of flour, half a tablespoonful of cornstarch and six tablespoonfuls of sugar.

  3. Add the hot milk hastily, stir, pour the mixture back into the double boiler, and stir and cook until thick and smooth.

  4. Add one egg beaten until very light, cook just a minute, and take from the fire.

  5. Add a teaspoonful of vanilla and turn the mixture out to cool.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

731Calories
27 gProtein
14 gFat
120 gCarbs

Counts 4 of 5 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Beaten into the batter to add structure and lift, so the puffs rise and hold their shape.
Flour
Cooked with the boiling water and butter to form a paste that sets the puff's structure.
Butter (in the method)
Melted into the boiling water to add richness and tenderness to the shell.
Milk
Heated and thickened into the filling, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling so it becomes smooth and firm when cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs one at a time. Each egg must be fully incorporated before the next is added. Eggs emulsify with the paste and give it the stretch that lets the puffs rise; adding them too fast or leaving the batter too hot can cause it to split or fail to swell.

“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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