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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A light pastry shell filled with a sweet milk and egg custard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 choux paste

  1. Bring the cold water and butter to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour all at once and stir until well cooked.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Add the eggs one at a time without beating.

  5. Drop tablespoons of the mixture onto a buttered baking sheet.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown or golden.

Make the cream filling

  1. Combine sweet milk, sugar, flour (or corn-starch), and beaten egg in a saucepan for the cream filling.

  2. Stir the filling over heat until thickened.

  3. Flavor the filling to taste.

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Starches set during cooking, giving the paste structure and the filling body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and softens the paste for a tender bite.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift, so the puffs rise and set as they bake.
Water
Turns to steam in the oven, helping the puffs rise and go hollow.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the cream filling.
Corn-starch
Thickens the cream filling as it heats.

The step that matters

Add the eggs one at a time without beating. The paste must be smooth and firm enough to hold its shape but loose enough to expand. Adding eggs gradually and mixing gently lets each one blend in fully, so the puffs rise well and do not collapse.

“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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