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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A baked puff pastry filled with a sweet cream made from flour, sugar, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

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 puffs

  1. In a saucepan, combine butter and boiling water over heat.

  2. Once boiling, stir in flour until well combined.

  3. Remove from heat and add beaten eggs, stirring until cool.

  4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking sheet.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, beat together ½ cup flour, sugar, and 2 eggs.

  2. Add this mixture to 1 pint of boiling milk and stir until thickened.

  3. Flavor the cream to taste.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Melts into the boiling water to add fat, richness and tenderness to the puff shell.
Flour
Starch gelatinizes when cooked, giving the dough structure so the puffs hold their shape.
Eggs
Proteins set during baking and add structure, while their moisture turns to steam that lifts the puffs.
Boiling water
Hydrates the flour and cooks the starch, and its steam helps the puffs rise.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the cream, adding moisture and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and adds body to its flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs off the heat. Eggs must be beaten into the hot dough gradually. Added too quickly or while the dough is too hot, they can scramble, and if the dough is too loose the puffs will spread and fail to rise well in the oven.

“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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