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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A light pastry made from a batter of water, butter, flour, eggs, and baking soda, filled with a sweetened milk custard.

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

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

  2. Add flour while boiling and stir until combined.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten eggs and the dissolved baking soda.

  4. Grease small tins and fill them with the mixture.

  5. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, boil the milk in a separate saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs, then add sugar and flour; mix well.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk and cook until thickened.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the puffs and thickens the cream.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the puffs rise and set as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the choux dough.
Milk
Provides liquid and creaminess for the filling.
Baking soda
Helps the puffs rise and brown during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Choux puffs rely on steam from the dough to lift them. If they are opened or underbaked too early, they can collapse and stay soft inside.

“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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