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Dessert

Cream Puffs

Cream puffs are small puffed pastries made from a dough of butter, water, flour, salt, sugar, and eggs, 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Boil the water and butter together.

  2. When boiling hard, add the flour all at once and stir vigorously until it forms a smooth ball and leaves the sides of the saucepan.

  3. Add the salt and sugar.

  4. When cool, add the unbeaten eggs one at a time, beating until thoroughly mixed.

Bake and fill

  1. Drop pieces the size of a walnut onto a buttered pan, spacing them three inches apart.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F) for about 30 minutes, starting with a hot oven and then reducing the heat.

  3. After baking, let them dry out in the oven with the door open for about 10 minutes to prevent them from falling.

  4. When completely cool, cut open with scissors and fill with whipped cream or 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 give the dough a tender crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the starch structure that sets around the steam to hold the puffs.
Eggs
Provide structure and moisture, and their steam helps the puffs rise and hold their hollow centers.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs. The dough must be cool and the eggs added one at a time, beaten until fully mixed. Hot dough can cook the eggs, and unevenly mixed batter gives a weak, uneven structure that may collapse.

“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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