[Sca-cooks] period cream puffs?

[Terry Decker]

No cook, just a French origin for the word, with the first recorded English 
use for little cakes (apparently of choux pastry) being in 1600.  Since the 
French word is poupelain and is used in La Varenne, then it is likely a 
transfer to English some time in the 16th Century.  BTW, the earlier meaning 
in French is "finicall little girl."

Bear

> It'd be kind of funny if it turned out there was a 14th-century
> English cook named Poplin responsible for all this... ;-)
>
> Adamantius