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Cream Puffs
Let 1 cupful milk and 1/2 cupful of butter come to a boil. Slowly stir into this 1 cupful sifted flour mixed with 1 teaspoonful of baking-powder. Add 3 well-beaten eggs and drop on buttered tins. Bake about thirty minutes in a moderate oven. When cool cut off tops and fill with whipped cream, corn-starch filling, or the following:
Cream.-1 cupful milk, 1/2 cupful sugar, 3 tablespoonfuls of flour or 1 of corn starch; flavor with vanilla.
This is a standard choux paste with the eggs beaten in all at once, plus a spoonful of baking powder that later cookbooks dropped. A few small adjustments bring it in line with how choux is handled now.
- The hinge: cook the paste, then cool itAfter the flour goes into the boiling milk and butter, keep stirring over heat a minute or two until the paste pulls away from the pan in a smooth ball. Let it cool until only warm before adding the eggs, or the eggs scramble and the puffs will not rise.
- EggsTreat "3 well-beaten eggs" as approximate; eggs of the period were often smaller than a modern large egg, so go by the consistency of the paste rather than a fixed weight. Beat them in gradually rather than all at once; stop when the paste falls from the spoon in a thick ribbon, even if a little egg is left over.
- The baking powder is optionalChoux is leavened by steam, and modern versions use none. No reason for it is given here; if you cook the paste well, you can leave it out.
- Oven temperature"moderate oven" is generally taken to mean somewhere around 350-375F. Choux does better with a hot start: 425F for the first 15 minutes to drive the steam, then down to 350F for another 15 to 20 to set the shells.
- Do not open the doorThe puffs collapse if cooled by a draught before the walls are firm. Leave them until they are deep gold and feel light and hollow, then pierce each one to let the steam escape.
- Buttered tinsUse a parchment-lined baking sheet instead. Butter alone lets the paste slide and spread as it heats.
- Size and yieldNo yield is given. Dropped in tablespoonfuls the quantity will make roughly a dozen and a half small puffs; larger spoonfuls will give proportionally fewer. Leave two inches between them.
- The filling as givenThe "Cream" is a flour-thickened pastry cream and no method is printed. Whisk the flour or cornstarch and sugar into the cold milk, bring to a boil stirring constantly, and cook a further two minutes so the starch loses its raw taste; add vanilla off the heat and chill under a covering of plastic wrap. It contains no eggs, so it will be thick and plain rather than rich.
- Fill at the last minuteFilled puffs soften within an hour or two. Bake the shells ahead, keep them dry at room temperature, and crisp them briefly in a 300F oven before filling if needed.
Cream puffs are the English-language name for pâte à choux, a paste French pastry cooks were working with well before the nineteenth century and which reached American kitchens through the pastry chapters of household manuals. The method here -- boil the liquid and fat, beat in the flour, then work in eggs -- follows those earlier books; the teaspoonful of baking powder is an addition not found in the French versions.