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Dessert

Cream Puffs

Cream puffs are small puffed pastries made from a batter of butter, water, flour, eggs, and baking soda, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the choux paste

  1. Boil water and butter together.

  2. While boiling, add flour very slowly to avoid lumps.

  3. Stir thoroughly, then let cool.

  4. Add the well-beaten eggs and baking soda dissolved in hot water.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto a buttered pan, about the size of a walnut and three inches apart.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for over 20 minutes.

  3. Do not open the oven for at least 10 minutes; minimize opening afterward.

  4. If the oven is too hot, reduce the heat instead of letting cool air in.

Fill and serve

  1. Allow to cool completely before filling.

  2. Cut open with scissors and fill with mock 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. 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
Adds fat and richness, and helps the dough stay tender after baking.
Water
Turns to steam in the oven, pushing the dough up into a hollow puff.
All-purpose flour
Provides the starch that gelatinises and gives the puffs their structure.
Eggs
Add moisture and protein that set as they bake, holding the puff's shape.
Baking soda
Releases gas when heated, adding some extra lift to the rising puffs.

The step that matters

Keep the oven closed during the first minutes of baking. The puffs rise mainly from steam pressure inside the soft dough. Opening the oven early lets steam escape and cool air in, so the walls can collapse before they set.

“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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