Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Puffs

Cream puffs are choux pastry filled with sweetened whipped cream or custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the choux dough

  1. Boil 1 cup water and ½ cup butter until the butter is dissolved.

  2. Add 1 cup flour and stir until smooth. Set aside to cool.

  3. Add 3 eggs and beat until free from lumps.

Bake and fill

  1. Bake in muffin tins at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

  2. When cool, slit along one side and fill with sweetened whipped cream or custard.

Make the custard

  1. For custard, beat 2 eggs with ½ cup sugar.

  2. Dissolve 2 tablespoons cornstarch in ½ cup milk.

  3. Heat 1½ cups milk, add cornstarch, and boil until thickened.

  4. Add the egg and sugar mixture, and boil for a few more minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and add flavoring.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Butter
Melts into the boiling water to add fat and richness to the dough.
Flour
Starch that gelatinises with the eggs to give the puffs their structure.
Eggs
Set during baking and provide structure, rise and richness in the puffs.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a custard that holds its shape when filled.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the egg custard as it sets.
Milk
Provides liquid and body for the custard filling.

The step that matters

Add the egg and sugar mixture to the thickened milk. Eggs can scramble if added to very hot liquid too quickly. Stirring constantly while adding them, then boiling briefly, lets the custard thicken smoothly.

“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.

More cream puffs recipes

Boston 12Chocolate 3 See all 281 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes