Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 paste
In a pot, bring 1 pint of water to a boil.
Melt ½ pound of lard in the boiling water.
Stir in ¾ pound of flour and boil until a thick paste forms.
Set the pot in a vessel of boiling water and continue to thicken.
Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
Bake and serve
Add 10 eggs and ¼ teaspoon of salt; mix well.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets, spaced apart.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.
Serve with syrup.
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.
-
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Provide structure and lift, setting the puffs as they bake.
- All-purpose flour
- Forms the thick paste whose starch gelatinizes to give the puffs their body.
- Lard
- Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the paste.
- Boiling water
- Melts the lard and cooks the flour into the base paste.
The step that matters
Cook the paste until thick before adding eggs. If the flour paste is not cooked long enough and cooled slightly, the starch stays underdeveloped and the eggs can scramble or the puffs may collapse instead of rising with steam and a hollow center.
“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
You might also like
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.