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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A puff pastry filled with a sweet custard made from milk, egg, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the shells

  1. In a saucepan, bring 1 cup of water to a boil.

  2. Add ½ cup of butter and 1 cup of flour, stirring until combined.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Once cooled, mix in 3 whole eggs until well combined.

  5. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture onto a greased baking pan.

  6. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 40 minutes until puffed and golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, cook 1 egg, 1 cup of sweet milk, and ½ cup of sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour and add flavoring to taste.

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the starch and structure that hold the choux paste together.
3 whole eggs
Add structure and moisture, and help the shells puff and set as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing tenderness to the shells.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling and gives it a creamy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until puffed and golden. The shells must bake fully so the steam inside sets the walls into hollow cases. Underbaked shells may collapse as they cool.

“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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