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Dessert

Eclairs a LA Creme

Eclairs à la Crème are choux pastry filled with vanilla custard cream.

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

Eclairs a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Make the choux pastry

  1. In a saucepan, bring the water and butter to a boil.

  2. Stir in the sifted flour until it pulls away from the sides of the pan.

  3. Remove from heat and add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Transfer the batter to a piping bag and pipe finger shapes onto a greased baking sheet.

  5. Bake until golden and let cool.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, combine milk, sugar, egg yolks, butter, corn starch, and vanilla in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

Fill and serve

  1. Once cooled, fill the eclairs with the cream.

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

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

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

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

  4. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Flour
Provides the starch structure that sets the choux batter around the steam.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, and help the pastry puff and set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the pastry and the cream.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set and add richness.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream by swelling in the hot liquid to a smooth custard.

The step that matters

Cook the cream until thickened. Stirring constantly over medium heat keeps the milk and egg yolks from scorching or curdling, while the starch and yolks thicken the custard evenly.

“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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