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Dessert

Eclairs Au Cafe

Eclairs au Café are pastry shells filled with coffee‑flavored whipped cream and glazed with a coffee‑sugar icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Eclairs Au Cafe

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 paste

  1. Melt the butter with 6 tablespoons of boiling water in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir with a wooden spoon for 3 minutes until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat.

  4. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring thoroughly after each addition.

Bake and fill

  1. Grease an eclair pan.

  2. Fill the pan with the mixture.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400 °F (200 °C) for about 15 minutes, watching carefully to prevent burning.

  4. Make an incision in the side of each eclair.

  5. Fill the incisions with sweetened whipped cream flavored with coffee.

Make the icing and finish

  1. Boil sugar and ⅓ cup strong coffee until it threads when dropped from a spoon.

  2. Remove the icing from heat and stir until it thickens slightly.

  3. Coat each eclair with the icing.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the choux paste.
Flour
Provides structure that sets the choux paste around the steam as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, and help the eclairs puff and set as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the icing and helps it thicken into a glossy coating as it cooks.
Strong coffee
Adds bitter aroma and flavor to the icing and the whipped cream filling.

The step that matters

Drying the paste before adding eggs. Stirring the flour until the mixture leaves the pan sides cooks off excess moisture. Eggs added to a paste that is too wet or too hot can cause it to thin out and fail to puff.

“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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