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Dessert

Chocolate Eclairs

A pastry made of a butter‑water‑flour dough filled with whipped cream and topped with chocolate icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Chocolate Eclairs

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 choux paste

  1. Boil water and butter together in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour and mix carefully, stirring until it leaves the side of the pan.

  3. Remove the pan from heat and add the egg yolk, then the egg whites one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  4. Turn the mixture out onto a plate and let it cool.

Shape and bake

  1. Once cool, take small pieces and roll them into cork shapes.

  2. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.

Fill and finish

  1. When cool, fill with whipped cream and cover with chocolate icing.

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 + chocolatetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + chocolatetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,543 recipes

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

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the paste's shape and sets when baked.
Egg whites
Add moisture and steam that help the éclairs rise and puff up.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the paste bind into a smooth, glossy dough.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and tenderises the pastry's texture.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs. Each egg must be fully incorporated before the next is added. If the paste is too hot or under-mixed, the eggs can scramble or the paste may be too loose to hold its shape, so the éclairs may not rise well.

“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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