Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Puffs

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a saucepan, boil the butter and cold water together.

  2. Add the flour and continue to boil for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. When the mixture pulls away from the sides of the pan, transfer it to a dish and let it cool.

  4. Once cool, add the beaten eggs and stir until smooth.

Bake and fill

  1. Drop small pieces of the mixture onto an ungreased baking sheet.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Once baked, fill the puffs with whipped cream and dust with icing sugar.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 and richness, and helps give the dough a tender texture.
Flour
Its starch sets as the dough cooks, giving the puffs their structure.
Eggs
Their proteins set the walls, and their moisture turns to steam that lifts the puffs.
Whipped cream
Fills the hollow puffs with moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs after cooling. If the mixture is still very hot, the eggs can scramble instead of blending smoothly. If it is too stiff or the eggs are not fully incorporated, the dough may not puff properly 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.

More cream puffs recipes

Boston 12Chocolate 3 See all 281 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes