Why are profiteroles called that?
Although well known, profiterole is often misspelled. It must be said that she is decked out with a funny name that is hard to pin down.
To understand this, a little historical journey is necessary. The opportunity to go back to the time when the profiterole was eaten salty.
The description may be brief, but it doesn't take more to depict a profiterole. The emblematic dessert of today's brasseries and bistros has not always been composed of such ingredients.
- Small profits for servants
Long before being the delicious dessert we know, the profiterole (with two "l" at the time) was in fact a salty snack. Indeed, in the 17th century, it happened that servants were rewarded with a dumpling of bread dough baked under the ashes. This “little profit” was then called “profiterolle”. It was sometimes filled with a stew made from game or poultry, vegetables and mushrooms.
In the 18th century, profiteroles became a dish in their own right: "Cooks call potage de profiteroles a soup made with bread rolls stripped of crumb, dried, simmered, and filled with beatilles (delicate meats)", can we read in the Dictionary of the French language, ancient and modern by Pierre Richelet (1759).
- From Dumpling to Sophisticated Cabbage Bread
Finally, it was the invention of choux pastry that turned the recipe for profiteroles upside down. It is the Italian Penterelli, pastry chef of Queen Catherine de Medici, who would have made the first choux pastry. His successor, Popelini, improved the recipe by imagining the poupelin based on “hot dough” in which he stuffed fruit jelly.
Then, in the 19th century, the famous pastry chef Antonin Carême was inspired by salted profiteroles and garnished with the famous pastry cream puffs. The sweet profiterole was born.
As for the addition of chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream, it dates from 1875, but the story does not say who is behind it.
