Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Puffs

A pastry filled with a sweet cream filling.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the choux paste

  1. Bring 1 pint of water to a boil in a large pot.

  2. Melt ½ pound of lard in the boiling water.

  3. Stir in ¾ pound of flour while boiling until a thick paste forms. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Once cool, add 10 eggs and ¼ teaspoon salt. Mix thoroughly.

  5. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets, spacing them apart.

  6. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

Make the cream filling

  1. Mix 5 ounces of flour with some cold milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Combine the paste with 1 quart of milk in a kettle and heat until thickened.

  3. Add 4 beaten eggs and ¾ pound of sugar to the thickened mixture. Stir until creamy.

  4. Remove from heat and add vanilla extract. Let cool before using.

Fill and serve

  1. Once the puffs are cool, carefully open them with a knife and fill with the cream filling.

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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Bind the paste and help the puffs rise and set into hollow shells.
All-purpose flour
Forms the starch paste that gives the choux its structure and holds the puffs.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the paste and adds richness to the shells.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that thickens into a creamy custard filling.
White sugar
Sweetens the cream filling and adds body as it sets.

The step that matters

Cooling the paste before adding eggs. If the cooked flour paste is still very hot, the eggs will scramble instead of blending smoothly. Cooling slightly keeps the dough smooth so the puffs can rise and hold their shape when baked.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes