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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A baked pastry filled with a sweet milk and flour custard.

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 ↓

Cream Puffs

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 dough

  1. Combine 1 cup butter and 1 cup hot water in a saucepan and bring to a boil.

  2. Stir in 1 cup flour.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add 3 eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition for 5 minutes.

  5. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into gem tins.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 25 minutes.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine ½ cup sugar, 1 egg, 2 tablespoons flour, and 1 cup sweet milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add flavoring to taste and bring to a boil, stirring constantly until thickened.

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
Adds fat and richness, and helps the dough stay tender.
All-purpose flour
Its starch sets into structure as the puffs bake and the filling thickens.
Eggs
Add structure and moisture, and their steam helps the puffs rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the filling.
Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that thickens into the filling with the egg and flour.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. If the paste is too hot, the eggs can scramble; if it is too cool, the eggs will not blend in smoothly. Beating each egg in fully gives a smooth, stretchy dough that rises well in the oven.

“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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