SC - cream puff's

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Kerry Romano wrote:

> So, I'm confused.  Are cream puffs or at least the dough, period?
> 
> Linneah

Technically choux paste is what is known as a panada with eggs, which
may have been eaten as some kind of pudding or porridge, since panadas
were originally bread-crumb-based (as the name suggests) porridges. The
idea of using flour instead of bread crumbs is probably at the tail end
of period, which may or may not have much relevance unless you were
thinking of boiling the stuff.

What we are pretty sure of is that baking a flour-based panada with eggs
so that it puffs up dramatically is apparently an eighteenth-century
innovation.

Puff pastry (as in laminated dough-butter amalgam), by the way, appears
to be period. Recipes appear in several English sources from the late
16th century on, and there are some earlier ambiguous recipes and
references to a pastry similar to it in some Andalusian and Spanish
sources, I believe, which seem to keep it pretty distinct from what we
call phyllo dough or barrak.

Summary: Choux paste or cream puff / eclair paste, which is really a
batter, is probably not period for practical purposes. Puff pastry dough
almost certainly is (I just found a reference to it in the Forme of
Cury, under the name Payn Puff).

Everything you never wanted to know about it...;  )

Adamantius 
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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