Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 paste
In a pot, bring 1 pint of water to a boil.
Melt ½ pound of lard in the boiling water.
Stir in ¾ pound of flour while boiling until a thick paste forms.
Set the pot in a larger vessel of boiling water and continue cooking until thick.
Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
Shape and bake
Once cool, add 10 eggs and ¼ teaspoon salt; mix well.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets, spacing them apart.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.
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.
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Flour
- Forms the thick paste that gives the puffs their structure once baked.
- Eggs
- Add moisture and structure and help the paste puff and set as it bakes.
- Lard
- Adds fat that tenderizes the paste and helps it separate into a flaky, rich shell.
- Boiling water
- Melts the lard and gelatinizes the flour so the dough thickens into a paste.
The step that matters
Cooking the flour paste until thick. Cooking the flour in boiling liquid gelatinizes its starch so the paste holds steam. If it is under-cooked, the puffs may collapse or turn out soggy inside.
“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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