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Dessert

Profiteroles for Soup

A pastry made from a batter of water, flour, butter, and eggs, baked and served with soup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Profiteroles for Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Heat the water in a small frying pan until boiling.

  2. Add the butter and wait for the liquid to boil again.

  3. Add the flour all at once, stirring well for 2–3 minutes to avoid burning.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and let it cool.

  5. Once cool, add the eggs one at a time, beating the mixture for at least 10 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Lightly butter a cake pan and drop the mixture in tiny balls.

  2. Bake for 10 minutes and set aside until ready to serve with soup.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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 starch that sets the dough into a structure once cooked.
Eggs
Add moisture and structure, helping the dough puff and hold its shape when baked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and tenderness to the dough.
Water
Turns into steam during baking, helping the dough puff up and become hollow.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the eggs. If the mixture is still hot, the eggs can scramble or cook unevenly. Cooling it first lets the eggs blend smoothly, giving a dough that can puff properly 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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