[Sca-cooks] Cream Puff Source dated 1604

[Anne-Marie Rousseau]

hey all from Anne-Marie
Johanna says re: cream puff like objects...

>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.]

a number of us are currently working on a transcription and translation of
this work.

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

The PPCs at my house dont go that far back. can you give the complete
citation (ie is it commercially available/?)

>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.
>

*gulp*...do you have a copy of this???? I"ve been looking for years with no
luck!

its interesting that the modern "Choux paste" is apparently because the
little units look like small cabbages :)

--AM