Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Puffs

Cream puffs are small, puffed pastries made from a choux dough of water, butter, flour, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cream Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the paste

  1. Boil the hot water and butter together for 1 minute.

  2. Add the flour gradually.

  3. Blend into a stiff, smooth paste.

  4. Cool the mixture.

Add the eggs

  1. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto buttered baking sheets.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 25 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Gives the paste structure so it can hold its shape and set around the steam.
Eggs
Add moisture and protein that set the puffs and help them rise and become hollow.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and is melted into the boiling water.
Hot water
Provides moisture that turns to steam in the oven, helping the puffs rise.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the eggs. If the paste is still very hot, the eggs can scramble or cook partly on contact. Cooling lets the eggs blend smoothly, giving a batter that rises properly.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes