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Dessert

Cream Puffs

A light pastry made from flour, butter, eggs, water, and milk, filled with a sweet milk and sugar mixture.

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 puffs

  1. In a saucepan, bring the cold water and butter to a boil.

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

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the eggs one at a time without beating.

  4. Drop tablespoonfuls onto a buttered baking sheet.

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

Make the cream filling

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

  2. Stir over heat until thickened, then flavor 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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
Starch that gelatinises with the liquid to give the choux paste its structure.
Eggs
Add structure as they set and provide moisture that turns to steam for lift.
Butter
Fat that adds richness and tenderness to the puff shell.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to the cream filling.
Sweet milk
Liquid base of the cream filling that thickens with heat.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the cooled paste. If the paste is still hot, the eggs will scramble, and if it is too wet or under-mixed, the puffs may not rise well. Adding them one at a time without beating lets the paste absorb them into a smooth, glossy dough that holds its shape while baking.

“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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