Profiterole

The profiterole and the choux pastry on which it rests are traced by a long-standing legend to the sixteenth-century court of Catherine de' Medici, who on her marriage into the French royal house brought Italian chefs with her; one, named Popelini (also Panterelli or Pantanelli), is said to have made an early dough called pâte à Popelin that is considered the precursor. The legend is enduring but ill-documented — little is known with certainty, and the story is repeated more as tradition than as verified record. The modern filled form dressed with sauce developed later in French pâtisserie, and the profiterole became a brasserie standard.

A profiterole is a hollow choux shell the size of a golf ball, split and filled so the cream shows at the opening. The shell is crisp and dry; the filling — classically vanilla ice cream — is cold and soft against it. Warm chocolate sauce is poured over at the table, cooling into a thin, glossy film on contact with the cold cream; eaten at once, before the shell softens, the contrast of cold cream, hot sauce, and crisp pastry is the point of the dish.

The profiterole uses the steam-leavening of pâte à choux: a high-moisture dough of water, butter, flour, and eggs expands in the oven as its water turns to steam, inflating the dough into a hollow shell that the egg proteins then set. Once cooled, the shell is pierced or split and filled; because both the filling and the sauce are wet, profiteroles are assembled just before serving so the gelatinized-starch crust does not absorb moisture and collapse. The warm chocolate sauce is an emulsion of dark chocolate and cream — poured hot, it flows; as it meets the cold filling it thickens and sets into a soft glaze that holds its shine.