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Buckeye Cream Puffs

Cream puffs filled with sweet milk cream and rolled in coarse sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Buckeye Cream Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Mix the flour with baking powder.

  4. Gradually add the sugar to the egg yolks, then fold in the flour mixture.

  5. Fill tea cups half full with the batter and bake until golden.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, place a pint of sweet milk in a kettle of boiling water.

  2. In a bowl, mix ½ cup sugar with 1 tablespoon corn starch and a little sweet milk.

  3. Add the beaten yolks and a piece of butter to the boiling milk, then stir in the corn starch mixture.

  4. Flavor with lemon or vanilla.

Fill and finish

  1. Once the cakes are baked, cut them open and fill with the cream, then roll in the egg whites and coarse sugar.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 whites and yolks give the puffs their light, airy structure and set the custard cream.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the baked cakes together around the cream.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and become light.
Corn starch
Thickens the sweet milk into a smooth, stable cream.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the cream.

The step that matters

Stirring the corn starch mixture into the boiling milk. Cornstarch needs to be heated while stirred to thicken fully and evenly. Adding it without constant stirring can leave lumps or a thin cream, and adding the yolks too hot can scramble them.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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