[Sca-cooks] Cream Puff Source dated 1604

[johnna007h at netscape.net]

Cream Puff Source dated 1604

With regard to the recent questions on cream puffs, there is apparently a 1604 source.

Barbara Wheaton in Savoring the Past. The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789, [1983, 1996] traces recipes for cream puffs or more properly pate a choux to a recipe in Lancelot de Casteau’s Ovverture de Cvisine which was published in Leige in 1604. On page 33 and more fully on pages 176-177, she describes the wide assortment of pastry recipes found in Casteau, concluding that the fritter recipes are an “exploitation of pate a choux for baking, frying and poaching
” Wheaton includes Casteau’s recipe for “Paste de bugnolle ou friture” (pages 248-9). Her adaptation includes four versions of preparation and cooking once the dough is made. One version is to form and bake at 350 degrees. [See PPC#8 for an examination of the history of the 19th century croquembouche, which is of course another far grander use of the dough.]

By the way, Casteau was reprinted in 1983 as Ouverture de Cuisine and was reviewed in PPC#15.

There is a recipe in Le Patissier Francois, which is often credited to La Varenne. It’s found in chapter xix and is entitled “La maniere de faire des petits choux.” [It appears on page 405 of the combined edition entitled Le Cuisinier Francois that Flandrin and the Hymans released in 1983.] I don’t know whether or not the recipe appears in the “Englished” version of Le Patissier that was published in England as Marnette’s The Perfect Cook in 1656. If it does, that could well be the earliest English recipe.


As to serving them at an SCA feast, I do know that cream puffs were served at the Midrealm Crown Feast, held in the Barony of Wurm Wald in May of 1974.  They were prepared in the classic manner, baked, then sliced in half, scooping out all the undone bits and then rebaked to get them crisp. For that feast, they were baked and then freshly filled during the late night & early morning hours to be served later that same evening. They were much appreciated.

Johnna Holloway

(As to who I am
.. I am a professional librarian, I collect cookbooks, works on food history and gastronomy, and once upon a time when I was active in the SCA,  I was Johnnae llyn Lewis, having joined the Society in back in August 1973. I joined the list today 6/29/01 after coming across it last evening.)

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Anne-Marie Rousseau sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
Tue, 19 Jun 2001 07:21:03 -0700

hey all from Anne-Marie

Clever Adamantius, putting my name in the tagline :) (I wouldnt normally have opened this thread)to my memory, la Varenne doesnt talk about a filled pastry object like a cream puff, but there is pastry that contains butter. I dont think any talk about beating in all those eggs, though....
You are more the modern cook than I, what makes a pate a choux? is it the ingredients? the technique?
I'll run through the book tonight and see what I can find, though.
Off the top of my head, I'm going to say that the concept of a flakey
pastry object filled with cream filling is modern. We have custard tart
objects though, in everything from Roman on later.....
I'll let you know if I can find anything close!
--AM

At 09:10 AM 6/19/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Tia Kitchen wrote:>>
>> Hi there again, I am curious to see if anyone has found any sources that say cream puffs are period or even marginal. A friend of mine would like to use them  in a feast, and would like some documentation. Thanks
>
>Hiya AM.
>
>I was just wondering if La Varenne mentions pate a choux. I don't
>imagine it would show up anywhere before that.
>
>Adamantius
>--
>Phil & Susan Troy
>


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