Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Puffs

A pastry made from a dough of water, flour, butter, eggs, baked until puffed, filled with custard or whipped cream.

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

  1. In a saucepan, combine cold water and flour until smooth.

  2. Add butter and stir over medium heat until the mixture resembles a lump of putty.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool, then beat in the eggs until well combined.

Bake the puffs

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a buttered baking sheet, spacing them apart.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake until puffed and golden.

  3. Cool on brown paper to prevent sweating.

Make the filling and serve

  1. For the filling, combine milk, beaten eggs, flour or corn starch, sugar, and flavoring in a heatproof bowl.

  2. Cook in a kettle of hot water, stirring until smooth.

  3. Once both the puffs and filling are cool, make a small slit in the side of each puff and fill with custard or whipped cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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
Beaten into the cooled paste to give it the structure that holds the puffs up.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the paste, helping it stay tender when baked.
Flour
Forms the starch base of the paste and thickens the custard filling.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the custard filling, adding richness and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard filling and contributes to its smooth, set texture.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs and baking the puffs. The paste must be cool enough that the eggs do not scramble, and the paste should be stiff enough to hold its shape. Steam from water in the dough lifts the puffs, so they need a hot oven and should not be opened early, or they will collapse.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, milk, sugar, cream. 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.

More cream puffs recipes

Boston 12Chocolate 3 See all 281 →

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes