Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Puffs

A light pastry filled with a lemon butter custard.

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

Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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. In a saucepan, combine hot water and butter; bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in flour until smooth and lump-free.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then stir in beaten eggs and baking soda.

  4. Drop spoonfuls onto baking sheets and bake at 400 °F (200 °C) for 20 minutes.

  5. Check and bake for an additional 10 minutes.

Make the cream and fill

  1. Once cooled, cut a slit in the side of each puff.

  2. For the cream, heat milk in a double boiler until boiling.

  3. In a bowl, mix cornstarch with a little milk, then add sugar and egg yolks.

  4. Combine with boiling milk, stirring constantly.

  5. Add butter and lemon extract, then cool before filling the puffs.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough as it bakes and puffs.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderizing the dough and adding flavor to the cream.
All-purpose flour
Forms the starch and gluten framework that holds the puffed dough shape.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth custard-style cream.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the cream, adding richness and setting it when heated.

The step that matters

Combine the custard with boiling milk while stirring constantly. Stirring keeps the egg yolks and cornstarch from clumping or scrambling as the mixture thickens, giving a smooth cream.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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