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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A choux pastry puff filled with a thickened milk, sugar, egg, and flour 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the choux paste

  1. Boil hot water and butter together.

  2. Stir in sifted flour and remove from heat.

  3. Stir until a paste forms and let cool.

  4. Add a pinch of salt and 3 eggs, then beat for 5 minutes.

Bake the puffs

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto buttered tins or use gem pans.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

  3. Slit a hole in the side for filling.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine milk, sugar, 1 egg, flour, and a pinch of salt in a saucepan and cook until thick.

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

Eggs
Bind the paste and help the puffs rise and set as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the paste stay tender.
Flour
Provides structure so the paste holds its shape while baking.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the filling, adding moisture and creaminess.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it thicken smoothly when cooked.

The step that matters

Beat the paste until smooth before baking. Beating in the eggs develops a glossy, pliable paste. Steam from the water and butter lifts the puffs as they bake, so a paste that is too stiff or too thin will not rise well.

“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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