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Cream Puffs
1 cup boiling water 1/2 cup shortening 1 cup flour 1/8 teaspoon salt 3 eggs 2 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder Heat water and shortening in saucepan until it boils up well; add all at once flour sifted with salt and stir vigorously. Remove from fire as soon as mixed, cool, and mix in unbeaten eggs, one at a time; add baking powder; mix and drop by spoonfuls 1 1/2 inches apart on greased tin; shape into circular form with wet spoon. Bake about 25 minutes in hot oven. Cut with sharp knife to admit filling.
This is standard choux paste with one Royal-branded addition: baking powder, which classic versions do without. The technique is sound, but the oven instruction and the baking time need pinning down.
- The hinge: dry the paste, then cool itThe hinge: cool the paste before the eggs go in -- the recipe says to take it off the fire as soon as the flour is mixed, though many later versions stir it a little longer over the heat until it pulls from the pan sides. Either way, let it cool to warm (around 140F) before adding the eggs, or they will begin to set.
- "Hot oven"In books of this period that is roughly 400 to 450F; start around 425F to drive the steam and lift the shells, and drop to about 375F once they are risen. The recipe's 25 minutes may not be enough; go by the shells being firm and deep gold rather than by the clock.
- Do not open the doorPuffs rise on trapped steam and set only once the walls have dried. Opening the oven in the first 20 minutes drops the temperature and flattens them.
- The baking powderTwo teaspoons is a house-brand flourish, not a structural necessity, and it can coarsen the crumb slightly. The recipe works without it. Note that the recipe adds it at the end, after the eggs, rather than sifting it with the flour.
- ShorteningIn Royal books of this period this means a solid vegetable fat or lard. Butter gives better flavour; use 8 tablespoons for the half cup and expect a slightly softer shell, since butter carries water that shortening does not.
- Flour measureA cup of flour spooned in and levelled is roughly 4 1/4 oz / 120 g, and a scooped cup can run considerably heavier. Choux is sensitive to the ratio, so weigh it if you can; a heavy cup makes a stiff paste that will not spread.
- Cut them while hotSlitting the side as soon as they leave the oven lets the steam out and keeps the interiors from going damp. Scrape out any raw strands of paste inside before filling.
- Yield and fillingThe 1 1/2 inches in the recipe is the spacing between spoonfuls, not the size of the puff; a batch this size should give roughly a dozen good-sized puffs. Fill only shortly before serving with pastry cream or sweetened whipped cream; filled shells soften quickly.
The New Royal Cook Book was published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, and like all manufacturer cookbooks its purpose was to find a use for the product in as many recipes as possible, including a few where it does no real work. Cream puffs are French pâte à choux, a paste that rises on steam alone and was well established in European pastry kitchens long before chemical leaveners existed; the name choux, cabbage, is traditionally said to refer to the puffs' lumpy shape. The two teaspoons of baking powder here are best read as advertising rather than technique.