[Sca-cooks] online glossary

[Philip W. Troy & Susan Troy]

"Cindy M. Renfrow" wrote:

> I found this last night & am looking for confirmation of this story:
>
> >From The Encyclopedia of Cookery, 1948, pp. 958-9:
> "Profiterolle. In the ancient cuisine, profiterolles were nothing more than
> small balls of ordinary bread crumbs, used for garnishing potages (or thick
> soups) until 1373 when William (Guillaume) Tirel, nicknamed "Taillevent,"
> the name under which he is better known, created profiterolles, made of a
> paste forced through a pastry tube. Later on, these little puffs were made
> of all sorts of food - fish, meat, poultry, and even vegetables. [biography
> snipped]...
> It was Taillevent who created Dodine Rouge which is a mixture used for
> stuffing ducks or water fowls. It is made as follows: Toast enough bread
> slices on both sides. Soak the toast in Chambertin wine. Fry finely sliced
> onions in a little salted lard, until golden brown; season highly with
> salt, pepper, cloves, cinnamon, and addd a little duck fat. Let simmer
> until the mixture begins to thicken. Cool. Fill the cavity of the duck.
> Having some of this paste left over, Taillevent decided to make use of it.
> He forced it through a pastry bag onto a greased baking sheet, placed this
> in a[n oven]... The result was... Light, fluffy little golden
> marbles...From the small one to the large one, there was only one step. And
> today we use the pate a chouxe as the French call the paste, for almost
> anything, from fish, meat, fruit custard, and ice cream."

OOOOhh, this sounds a bit Larousse-ey to me. Not having tried the
recipe, I can't say for sure whether it would work, but I highly suspect
that this is sufficiently different from a modern pate a choux recipe as
to produce vastly different results. There's no egg, first of all, and
while both recipes call for a cooked panade, one of flour and one of
breadcrumbs (so the gluten is cooked in both cases), I seriously doubt
that you'd get anything more than a very slight puffing, as opposed to
the rather dramatic inflation you get from a modern pate a choux.

I also have to question the source of the anecdote; comparatively little
is known about Taillevent, but we have this detailed account of a
five-minute period in his life? With no mention, as far as I can tell,
of anything called profiterole in the Viandier (which he appears not to
have written anyway)?

Ya know something? I think that was the wabbit!

Adamantius
--
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com

"It was so blatant that Roger threw at him.  Clemens gets away with
things that get other people thrown out of games.  As long as they
let him get away with it, it's going  to continue." -- Joe Torre, 9/98