Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream Puffs

A puff pastry made from flour, butter, water, eggs, milk, sugar, and corn starch, filled with a sweet custard.

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

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 choux dough

  1. Boil the butter and water together in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour while boiling until combined.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add the 5 beaten eggs and mix well.

  5. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto baking sheets.

Bake and make the filling

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

  2. Combine milk, sugar, corn starch, and 2 eggs in a saucepan for the filling.

  3. Cook the filling over medium heat, stirring constantly until thickened.

  4. Let the filling cool.

Assemble

  1. Fill the baked puffs with the cooled custard.

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. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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 starch structure of the dough that sets around the steam as the puffs bake.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough and help thicken the custard filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dough, helping it stay tender.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth custard filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. If the dough is still hot, the eggs will scramble or cook partially, so they will not blend in smoothly and the dough may be too loose to puff 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.

More cream puffs recipes

Boston 12Chocolate 3 See all 281 →

You might also like

Corn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipesGreen Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding14 recipes