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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A light pastry made from butter, water, flour, eggs, baked into puffs and filled with a sweet milk, egg, and sugar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the choux paste

  1. Combine the melted butter and hot water in a double boiler and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in the flour while boiling, then remove from heat and let cool.

  3. Stir in the eggs one at a time until well combined.

  4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into buttered tins.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  2. Cook the milk, egg, and sugar in a saucepan.

  3. Thicken the mixture with cornstarch or flour 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. 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

Eggs
Provide structure and set the puffs as they bake, and bind the paste.
All-purpose flour
Gives the paste body so it holds its shape around the steam.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the paste.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling and adds creaminess.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the filling as it cooks.

The step that matters

Let the paste cool before adding the eggs. If the paste is still very hot when the eggs go in, they can scramble or thin the mixture, so it may not hold its shape or puff properly in the oven.

“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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