Petits Choux
Ingredients.
Half a pint of Water.
Two ounces of Butter.
Four ounces of Flour.
One Yolk and two whole Eggs Essence of Vanilla or Orange.
A little Salt.
Put the water, butter, and salt into a stewpan; as soon as these begin to boil, draw the stewpan off the fire and add the flour, stir these well together over the fire with a wooden spoon until it becomes a soft paste; now add the flavouring and yolk of one egg, beat these well together and add the two whole eggs one at a time. Place this paste on a baking-sheet in round balls, bake a very light brown, and serve either plain or filled with whipped cream.
This is plain choux paste, written for a cook who already knew what the finished paste should look like. The proportions as printed are unusually wet, so the one thing worth attending to is the flour.
- The flour to water ratioHalf an imperial pint is 10 fl oz, about 285 g of water, against only 4 oz (115 g) of flour. Working choux paste normally uses roughly equal weights of liquid and flour, so as printed the paste will be far too slack to hold a ball. Either cut the water to about 5 fl oz or take the flour up to 8 oz, keeping the butter and eggs in proportion to whichever you choose.
- Archaic measuresA stewpan is simply a heavy saucepan. "Essence of vanilla or orange" means a few drops of extract; orange-flower water was another flavouring in use at the time.
- Off the heat, then back onThe instruction reads oddly but is correct: pull the pan off the flame, tip the flour in all at once to avoid lumps, then return it to the heat and beat until the paste comes away from the sides in a smooth mass, about a minute.
- Cool before the eggsLet the panade drop to hand-warm before beating in the yolk and whole eggs, or the eggs scramble. Add each egg only when the last is fully absorbed; the paste should fall from the spoon reluctantly in a thick ribbon.
- Egg sizeEggs were not graded then as they are now, so sizes varied. Beat in the last whole egg gradually and stop when the consistency is right rather than using it all.
- OvenThe original gives no oven guidance beyond "a very light brown." In a modern oven a hot start works: about 400-425F for the first 15 minutes to raise the buns, then down to 350F for another 10-15 minutes to dry the insides. Avoid opening the door during the rise, and pierce each bun when it comes out so the steam escapes.
- Yield and fillingThe quantities as printed give something in the region of twenty small buns, depending on how large you pipe or spoon them. Fill with sweetened whipped cream only once completely cold, and within a couple of hours of serving or the shells soften.
Petits choux is French for "little cabbages," a name traditionally explained by the way a well-baked bun puffs and crinkles like a cabbage head. The paste itself, pâte à choux, is often traced by tradition to Italian pastry cooks working in sixteenth-century France, though its familiar modern form belongs to the nineteenth-century French kitchen, where it underpinned éclairs, profiteroles, gougères and the croquembouche. Its appearance in an English cookery book of this sort is a sign of how thoroughly French technique had shaped the ambitious English kitchen: the recipe is given in bald outline, with no explanation of why flour cooked in boiling water and loaded with egg should rise without any raising agent.