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Dessert

Cream Puffs

Cream puffs are small pastries made from a butter, flour, water, eggs, and milk dough, filled with a sweet milk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the choux paste

  1. Boil the water and butter together.

  2. Stir in the flour until a smooth paste forms.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Add the 3 eggs and beat for 5 minutes.

  5. Drop by tablespoons onto a greased pan.

  6. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20-25 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, cook the milk, sugar, 1 egg, and 2 tablespoons of flour thoroughly. Add flavoring to taste.

Fill and serve

  1. When both the puffs and filling are cool, open the puffs at one side and fill.

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

Butter
Melts into the boiling water to add fat, tenderness and richness to the paste.
Flour
Starch sets with the egg and steam to give the puffs their structure.
Eggs
Provide structure and leavening as they expand with steam during baking.
Milk
Liquid base of the filling that thickens when cooked with flour and egg.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and adds body to its texture.

The step that matters

Let the cooked paste cool slightly before adding the eggs. If the paste is still very hot, the eggs can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Beating them in gradually keeps the dough glossy and able to trap the steam that makes the puffs rise.

“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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