Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Puffs

Cream puffs are small pastries made from a butter‑water‑flour‑egg batter baked until puffed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Cream Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Boil the butter in the water.

  2. Add the flour quickly and beat until smooth and thick.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Add one egg and beat until mixed.

  5. Repeat with the remaining eggs, one at a time.

Bake

  1. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture onto greased shallow pans.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 25 minutes.

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 + flourtop 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).

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 and richness to the dough.
All-purpose flour
Its starch gelatinizes with the hot liquid to form a thick paste that holds the puffs' shape.
Eggs
Add moisture and structure, and their proteins set during baking to hold the puffs open.

The step that matters

Let the dough cool slightly before adding the eggs. If the dough is still very hot, the eggs can scramble and the mixture will not emulsify smoothly. Eggs added to a warm but not hot base create a glossy 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.

More cream puffs recipes

Boston 12Chocolate 3 See all 281 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes