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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A pastry made from butter, water, flour, eggs, and baking soda, filled with a lemon‑flavored cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux dough

  1. Combine butter and boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Stir in pastry flour while boiling until well combined.

  4. Remove the mixture from heat and let it cool.

  5. Add beaten eggs and baking soda.

  6. Drop spoonfuls onto buttered baking pans to make twelve puffs.

Make the cream

  1. Heat milk in a saucepan for the cream.

  2. Whisk together 1 egg, sugar, and flour in a bowl.

  3. Pour the hot milk into the egg mixture.

  4. Stir the mixture constantly until thickened.

  5. Remove the cream from heat.

  6. Add lemon extract once cooled.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the baked puffs with the cream 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Adds fat and richness to the dough and helps give the puffs tenderness.
Eggs
Provide structure as they set, and moisture that turns to steam to lift the puffs.
Pastry flour
Forms the starch base of the dough that sets around the steam during baking.
Baking soda
Helps the puffs rise and brown in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream and adds richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the cream and softens its flavor.

The step that matters

Stir the cream constantly until thickened. Egg and flour thicken as they heat, and if the mixture sits still it can scorch on the bottom or lump. Constant stirring keeps heat even so the cream becomes smooth and thick rather than curdled or grainy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, milk, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, milk, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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