A profiterole or cream puff is a popular choux pastry. Choux paste is baked into small round puffs that are served cold with a sweet filling and sometimes a topping. The term profiterole refers to a filling of ice cream. A cream puff has a filling of whipped cream or pastry cream; however, cream containing alcohol is occasionally used. The puffs may be left plain or made to resemble swans or decorated with chocolate sauce, caramel, or a dusting of powdered sugar. This dessert is not to be confused with puff pastry.
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Preparation
The choux paste is piped through a pastry bag or dropped with a pair of spoons into small balls and baked to form largely hollow puffs. The puffs tend to deflate if left out to cool immediately after baking. To reduce the likelihood of the puffs deflating, some bakers poke holes into the finished puffs right after they have come out of the oven. Then the puffs are placed back into the still-warm, but turned off oven. The heat in the oven makes most of the wet dough inside the cream puff dry out and helps keep the shape of the puff. Another method is to reduce the oven temperature from about 400 degrees F to 350 degrees F about a quarter of the way into the baking process. This way, the shells are still crisp, but the inside is mostly hollow. After, the puffs are filled by slicing off the top, filling, and reassembling, or by injecting with a pastry bag and a narrow piping tip.
Presentation
The most common dessert presentations involve ice cream, whipped cream or a pastry cream filling, and are served plain, with chocolate sauce, or with a crisp caramel glaze. They can also be topped with powdered sugar, frosting, or fruit.
Filled and glazed with caramel, they are assembled into a type of pièce montée called croquembouches, often served at weddings and during the Christmas Holiday in France. Profiteroles are also used as the outer wall of Gâteau St-Honoré
Gougères
Gougères are the savoury equivalent of profiteroles, and may be filled with a cheese mixture, game puree, etc. They are generally used as an hors d'oeuvre or a garnish or dumpling for soup.[1]
History
The origin of both the pastry and its name profiterole are obscure.
The word profiterole (also spelled prophitrole, profitrolle, profiterolle)[2] has existed in English since the 16th century, borrowed from French. The original meaning in both English and French is unclear, but later it came to mean a kind of roll 'baked under the ashes'. A 17th-century French recipe for a Potage de profiteolles or profiterolles describes a soup of dried small breads (presumably the profiteroles) simmered in almond broth and garnished with cockscombs, truffles, and so on.[3] The current meaning is only clearly attested in the 19th century.[4]
The "cream puff" has appeared on US restaurant menus since 1851,[5] if not earlier.
See also
- Beard Papa's, a Japanese chain of cream puff shops
References
Notes
- ^ Larousse Gastronomique; see also the recipe for Palline ripiene in brodo in Giuliano Bugialli's Fine Art of Italian Cooking, ISBN 0-8129-1838-X.
- ^ OED
- ^ Alfred Franklin, La vie privée d'autrefois. Arts et métiers, modes, mœurs, usages des Parisiens du XIIe au XVIIIe siècle: La Cuisine, Paris 1888, quoting from La Varenne, 1651
- ^ OED
- ^ "Revere House" restaurant, Boston, menu dated May 18, 1851: "Puddings and Pastry. ... Cream Puffs."
Sources
- Ayto, John. An A–Z of Food and Drink. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2002
- Larousse Gastronomique
- Oxford Companion to Food
- Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. History of Food. Barnes & Noble: New York, 1992
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