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Cream Puffs
1 cup boiling water
1 cup flour
½ cup butter or shortening
4 eggs
Add the boiling water to the butter or shortening, bring to a boil and stir in the flour thoroughly. Remove from the fire, let the mixture cool slightly and add the eggs one at a time, beating in each one for some time before adding the next. Drop by spoonfuls on a greased pan about two inches apart, shaping into a circular form and having the batter a little higher in the center. Bake one-half hour in a moderate oven (360° F.). If these cakes are removed from the oven before they are thoroughly done, they will fall. Take out one; if it does not fall, the others may be removed.
Cool and split partly with a sharp knife. Fill with a cream filling, whipped cream, or a fruit mixture.
Cream puffs and éclairs make an excellent foundation for a great variety of desserts. Split them open, fill with any kind of ice-cream, and cover with any sauce or combination of sauces. Replace cover, and serve immediately.
This is standard pâte à choux, written before the term was common in American home cookbooks. The proportions are sound; the technique notes are where the recipe repays attention.
- The hinge: dry the pasteAfter the flour goes in, keep the pan on the heat and beat until the paste pulls together into a smooth ball and leaves a thin film on the pan bottom, roughly two minutes. Under-dried paste holds too much water and gives flat, damp puffs.
- Cool before the eggs"Cool slightly" means warm but not hot enough to scramble egg. Beat each egg in until the paste is glossy and smooth again before the next; the mixture will look broken partway through and come back together.
- Egg sizeEggs were not sold in standardised sizes then and may well have run smaller than today's large eggs. Four large eggs into one cup of flour may be slightly loose; add the fourth in two additions and stop when the paste falls from the spoon in a thick ribbon that holds a soft peak.
- Oven temperatureThe stated 360F is workable, but most modern bakers start hotter to force the steam rise. If your puffs spread rather than climb, the paste was too soft or the oven too cool.
- Do not open the doorThe book's advice to test one puff before removing the rest is good, but opening the oven early can drop the temperature enough to collapse the puffs. Test only near the end of the half hour.
- Vent themA small slit in the side of each puff as it comes out lets steam escape and keeps the interior from going soggy while cooling.
- Fill lateCream-filled puffs soften within a couple of hours. Bake ahead, keep the shells at room temperature in a loosely covered tin, and fill just before serving; ice-cream fillings must be assembled and served at once, as the recipe says.
- YieldAbout 12 puffs of dessert size, or roughly 24 small ones.
Choux paste is, by tradition, traced to sixteenth-century Italian and French court cookery, though that origin story is more folklore than documented history; it reached American home kitchens through the pastry trade and the cooking-school movement of the late nineteenth century, which is why it turns up in a general-purpose household compendium like this one rather than only in professional manuals. The cream puff was exactly the sort of showpiece that repaid a little technique with a great deal of effect: four cheap ingredients, no leavening, and a dessert that looked bought. The closing note about ice-cream and sauces suggests that puffs and eclairs were treated as blank vessels, a base to be dressed up according to what the household had on hand.