Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Puffs

A choux pastry filled with a sweet custard made from milk, egg, sugar, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a saucepan, combine butter and hot water, then bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in flour while boiling, then let cool.

  3. Add eggs one at a time, beating until smooth.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto hot baking sheets and bake for 20 to 30 minutes.

Make the filling and fill

  1. For the filling, boil milk, egg, and sugar, then thicken with cornstarch.

  2. Flavor the filling with vanilla and fill the puffs once cool.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Melts into the water to add fat, richness, and flavor to the shell.
Flour
Its starch sets with heat and steam to give the puff its hollow, firm structure.
Eggs
Add structure and lift as steam expands the dough, and help the filling set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling, adding richness and body.
Cornstarch
Gelatinizes in the hot milk, thickening the filling into a smooth cream.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Each egg must be fully beaten in before the next is added, so the dough emulsifies smoothly. Adding them too fast can leave it greasy or lumpy, and the puffs may not rise well.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, milk, sugar):

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, milk, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More cream puffs recipes

Boston 12Chocolate 3 See all 281 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes