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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A baked pastry filled with a sweet cream made from eggs, sugar, flour, and milk.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the choux dough

  1. Boil water and butter together.

  2. Stir in the flour while boiling.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

  4. Gradually stir in the eggs (do not beat).

Bake the puffs

  1. Drop large spoonfuls into muffin rings.

  2. Bake for 25 minutes at 400°F (200°C) without opening the oven door.

Make and fill

  1. For the cream filling, beat 1 egg and sugar together.

  2. Add 5 teaspoons of flour and stir into 1 cup of boiling milk.

  3. Open the baked puffs with a knife and fill with the cream filling.

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

Eggs
Add structure by setting the dough as the puffs bake, and provide lift through steam.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the dough stay tender after baking.
Flour
Gives the dough structure so it holds its shape around the steam.
Milk
Provides moisture and body to the cream filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the cream filling.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the eggs (do not beat). Eggs must be worked into the warm paste gently so the dough becomes smooth and stretchy enough to trap steam. Beating or adding eggs too fast can make the dough runny, so the puffs fail to rise.

“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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