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Dessert

Cream Puff

A baked pastry with a sweet custard made from milk, flour, egg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Puff

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the pastry

  1. Boil ½ cup hot water and ½ cup butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in 1 cup all-purpose flour while boiling.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then stir in 4 eggs one at a time without beating.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a fairly hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

Make the cream

  1. For the cream, combine 1 pint milk, 3 tablespoons flour, 1 egg, and ½ cup sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Cook until thickened, then let cool before using.

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

All-purpose flour
Starch and gluten give the paste the structure to hold its shape and puff.
Eggs
Set the paste as it bakes and their steam helps the puffs rise hollow.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the paste and gives a tender, rich texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream, which thickens as its starch gelatinizes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and adds body to its flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the paste. If the paste is still hot, the eggs can scramble. Stirring them in gently, one at a time, keeps the dough smooth and stiff enough to hold its shape and rise.

“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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