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Dessert

Cream Puffs

Cream puffs are baked pastry shells filled with a sweet custard made from milk, sugar, corn starch, and eggs.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the puff dough

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

  2. Stir in the flour while boiling until combined.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add the 5 beaten eggs to the mixture and mix well.

  5. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto baking tins.

Bake the puffs

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the milk for the filling.

  2. Stir in the sugar, corn starch, and 2 beaten eggs.

  3. Cook until thickened.

  4. Flavor with lemon or vanilla.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the structure of the choux paste that holds the puffs' shape.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the paste and help the puffs rise and set.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and tenderness to the choux paste.
Milk
Provides the liquid base of the filling.
Corn starch
Thickens the filling as it heats.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Steam from the water and butter must expand the paste while the structure sets. Underbaked puffs collapse as they cool, so bake until they are fully golden and firm.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, milk, sugar, corn. 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.

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