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Cream Puffs
Mrs. Watson Thatcher.
One and one-half cups of flour, two-thirds of a cup of butter, one-half pint of boiling water; boil butter and water together, and stir in the flour while boiling; let it cool, and add five well-beaten eggs; drop on tins, and bake thirty minutes in a quick oven. Fill them with the following; one pint of milk, one cup of sugar, two-thirds of a cup of flour, two eggs; beat the eggs, flour, and sugar together, and stir them in the milk while it is boiling. When partially cool flavour with lemon. These are favourites in bake shops.
This is standard choux paste with a flour-thickened pastry cream, written for cooks who already knew both. Two things need spelling out: the oven and the fact that the filling must actually cook.
- The hinge: dry the paste, then don't open the ovenStir the flour into the boiling butter and water over heat until the paste pulls away from the pan in a smooth ball, leaving a thin film behind. Once the puffs are in, leave the door shut for the first 20 minutes or the steam that inflates them escapes and they collapse.
- "A quick oven"425-450F. A common modern approach is to start at 425F for 15 minutes to get the lift, then drop to 350F for the remaining 15 to dry the shells through. Thirty minutes total is right; pull them when deep golden and light, not merely browned.
- Half a pint of boiling waterOne cup (8 fl oz). The butter at two-thirds cup is about 150g, a rich ratio by modern standards but workable; use unsalted and add a pinch of salt, as butter of this period was often sold salted.
- EggsEggs of the period were ungraded and often smaller than today's large. Add four beaten eggs first, then the fifth a little at a time, stopping when the paste falls from the spoon in a thick, glossy ribbon. Let the flour paste cool to warm before adding them or they will scramble.
- The filling must boilTwo-thirds of a cup of flour needs sustained heat to lose its raw taste and set properly. After the egg-flour-sugar mixture goes into the boiling milk, keep it over the heat, whisking, for two to three full minutes at a simmer. Straining it afterwards removes any lumps.
- Flavour with lemonThe original most likely means lemon extract, a spoonful stirred in once the cream is off the heat. Finely grated zest infused into the milk gives a better result; add juice and it may thin the cream.
- Filling and yieldExpect 12 to 15 puffs from this quantity. Split them or make a small hole in the base and pipe the cooled cream in. Fill only shortly before serving; the shells soften within a couple of hours.
- StorageUnlike the shells, the pastry cream is a milk-and-egg custard and belongs in the refrigerator. Cover it with plastic pressed to the surface so it does not skin.
Cream puffs are the English name for choux à la crème, the pastry the French had formalised well before this book was printed; the paste itself is generally traced to sixteenth-century Italian cooks working in France, with Antonin Carême usually credited for standardising it in the early nineteenth century. What makes this entry interesting is the last line — "these are favourites in bake shops" — which places the dish in the commercial baker's window as much as in the home kitchen. The Home Cook Book appeared in Chicago in 1874, with a Toronto edition in 1877 that borrowed heavily from it, and Mrs. Watson Thatcher's version scales a confection of that kind for a home range, complete with a boiled flour pastry cream.