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
Mix cold water and flour in a bowl until smooth.
Combine the mixture with butter in a saucepan and stir over medium heat until it resembles a lump of putty.
Cool the mixture.
Add eggs to the cooled mixture and beat well.
Bake the puffs
Drop spoonfuls onto a buttered baking sheet, leaving space between them.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Bake the puffs until they are hollow and golden.
Cool the puffs on brown paper to prevent sweating.
Make the filling and fill the puffs
For the filling, combine milk, beaten eggs, flour or corn starch, and sugar in a heatproof bowl.
Flavor the mixture with lemon or vanilla.
Cook the filling in a kettle of hot water, stirring until smooth.
Once both the puffs and filling are cool, make a small slit in the side of each puff.
Fill each puff with 1 tablespoon of custard.
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.
-
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
-
Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,053 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
- Eggs
- Add structure and moisture to the paste, and set the custard filling.
- Flour
- Provides structure to the paste and thickens the custard filling as it cooks.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the paste.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the custard filling.
The step that matters
Add eggs to the cooled mixture. If the paste is still hot, the eggs can scramble and the dough will not blend smoothly. Cooling it first lets the eggs mix in evenly, giving puffs that rise well and hold their shape.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, milk, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, milk, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“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.
More cream puffs recipes
You might also like
Lemon Cake228 recipes
Lemon Ice147 recipes
Lemon Sherbet103 recipes
Lemon Custard64 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.