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Dessert

Cream Puffs, No. 3

A baked puff pastry with a sweet cream made from milk, sugar, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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, No. 3

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 dough

  1. Bring the water and butter to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Add all the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Beat the eggs until light and mix them into the dough by hand.

  5. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered parchment paper.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

Make the cream

  1. Boil the milk and sugar together for the cream.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the eggs and flour.

  3. Stir this mixture into the boiling milk.

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

Butter
Adds fat that enriches the dough and gives a tender texture.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that build the dough's structure.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, helping the puffs rise and set.
Milk
Supplies liquid and richness to the cream filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the cream.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs in by hand after the dough has cooled. Dough that is still hot can scramble the eggs, and eggs added gradually and beaten well give a smooth, glossy dough that holds its shape and puffs 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.

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