Skip to main content
Dessert

Cream for Filling

A custard-like cream made from milk, corn starch, eggs, sugar, butter, and vanilla or lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 for Filling

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pastry cream

  1. Wet the corn starch with enough milk to make a smooth paste.

  2. Boil the remaining milk.

  3. Beat the eggs, then add the sugar and corn starch mixture.

  4. When the milk boils, gradually pour in the egg mixture while stirring until smooth and thick.

  5. Add the butter and mix until melted, then set aside to cool.

  6. Once cooled, add vanilla or lemon extract.

Fill and serve

  1. Split the puffs with a sharp knife and fill them with the cream mixture.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Eggs
Thicken the cream as they set and add richness and structure.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth, stable custard as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and softens its set texture.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Gradually pour the egg mixture into the boiling milk while stirring. Adding hot milk to eggs too quickly, or cold eggs without stirring, can scramble them. Stirring while pouring tempers the eggs so the starch can thicken the cream smoothly.

“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 pastry cream recipes

Puff 5Chocolate 3 See all 52 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesCorn CakesCorn Cakes22 recipes