Profiterole
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A profiterole or cream puff (U.S.) is a food made from a small, round baked choux pastry filled with a sweet or savoury filling. The most common form nowadays is a dessert filled with whipped cream or pastry cream, and often served with chocolate sauce or a caramel glaze.
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[edit] Preparation
The choux pastry is piped through a pastry bag into small balls and baked until they puff up and become largely hollow. It is filled by slicing the choux, filling, and reassembling, or by injecting into a slit or hole with a pastry bag.
[edit] Sweet profiteroles
The most common dessert presentations involve a pastry cream, whipped cream, or ice 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 in France. Profiteroles are also used as the outer wall of Gâteau St-Honoré.
[edit] Savory profiteroles
Savory profiteroles are filled with a cheese mixture, game puree, etc. and are generally used as an hors d'oeuvre or a garnish or dumpling for soup.[1]
[edit] History
The word (also spelled prophitrole, profitrolle, profiterolle)[2] has existed in English since the 16th century. 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 simmered in almond broth and garnished with cockscombs, truffles, and so on.[3]
The current meaning appears to be 19th century.[4]
[edit] References
[edit] 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
[edit] 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
[edit] External links
