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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A puff pastry made from butter, flour, water, baking soda, eggs, and milk, filled with a sweet cream made from milk, eggs, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 puffs

  1. Combine butter and flour in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in boiling water until thick.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Stir in baking soda and beaten eggs.

  5. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered baking sheets, spacing them several inches apart.

  6. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

Fill with mock cream

  1. When done, open one side of each puff and fill with mock cream.

  2. To make mock cream, scald milk in a saucepan.

  3. Beat eggs, sugar, and flour together.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk until thick.

  5. Remove from heat and flavor with lemon or vanilla.

  6. Let the cream cool before filling the puffs.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
Adds fat and richness, tenderizing the dough and adding flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the puffs and thickens the mock cream.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and set the mock cream as they cook.
Baking soda
Helps the puffs rise and expand as they bake.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the mock cream, giving it moisture and body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the mock cream.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs and let the cream cool before filling. The dough must be thick and cool enough to hold its shape when dropped; eggs added to hot dough can thin it and cause the puffs to spread or fail to rise. Cooling the mock cream lets it thicken fully and keeps it from soaking into the puffs.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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