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Custard Cream Pufes

Custard cream puffs are pastry shells filled with a sweet custard cream.

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 ↓

Custard Cream Pufes

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 puff dough

  1. In a pot, bring the boiling water and butter to a boil.

  2. Stir in the flour and baking powder until combined.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  4. Drop spoonfuls into muffin rings and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. In another pot, boil the milk.

  2. In a bowl, beat together 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of sugar, and 2 eggs.

  3. Add this mixture to the boiling milk and cook for 3 minutes.

Fill and serve

  1. Cut a hole in the top of each puff and fill with the cream, replacing the piece of crust.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Melts into the boiling water to add fat and richness to the dough.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the puffs together as they bake.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture to the dough and thicken the custard.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the puffs rise and turn hollow.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, giving it creaminess.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard filling.

The step that matters

Cook the custard after adding the egg mixture. Once the flour and egg mixture meets the boiling milk, it needs steady cooking so the starch thickens and the eggs set without curdling. Stopping too early leaves the filling thin.

“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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