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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A baked pastry made from a milk and butter dough, filled with a sweetened egg and flour mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

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 puffs

  1. Boil the milk with the butter in a pot.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water and stir it into the boiling mixture.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add a little salt and the eggs.

  4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking sheet and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

Make the filling and fill

  1. Once cooled, split the puffs and fill them with the filling mixture.

  2. To make the filling, beat the eggs, sugar, and flour together.

  3. Stir this mixture into the boiling quart of milk until thickened.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 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

Flour
Starch that thickens and sets the dough and the filling.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and richer flavour.
Milk
Provides the liquid that thickens into the filling and moistens the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to a very hot paste can scramble and cook unevenly. Cooling first lets them blend smoothly so the dough stays glossy and holds its shape while baking.

“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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