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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A baked pastry made from a butter, water, flour, egg dough, filled with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Pour boiling water over the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Once it boils and the butter melts, stir in the flour until it pulls away from the pan.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then stir in the beaten eggs and baking soda.

Bake and fill

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto buttered baking pans.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes; do not open the oven door for the first 20 minutes to prevent falling.

  3. Once baked, fill with sweetened and flavored whipped 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

Eggs
Bind the dough and provide structure as they set, letting the puffs rise hollow.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dough and helps give a tender interior.
Pastry flour
Forms the starch structure that holds the puffed shell together as it bakes.
Boiling water
Melts the butter and gelatinizes the flour, creating a smooth, workable dough.
Baking soda
Adds a small amount of leavening and helps the shells brown.
Whipped cream
Adds moisture, sweetness and a light, creamy filling to the baked shells.

The step that matters

Keep the oven door closed for the first 20 minutes. Opening the door drops the oven temperature and releases steam before the shell's walls have set, so the puffs can 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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