Choux pastry

Choux pastry, also called pâte à choux, is a light pastry dough that appears in many desserts. It relies on just butter, water, flour, and eggs. Rather than using a chemical leavener, the dough’s high moisture content generates steam during baking—as the water evaporates, it pushes the pastry upward. This dough is common across European cooking, especially in France and Spain, and is the base for items like éclairs, Paris-Brest, cream puffs, profiteroles, crullers, beignets, churros, and funnel cakes.

The full name is often thought to come from the French *pâte à chaud* (“hot dough”). In early writings, “choux” had two meanings: one referred to a cheese puff recorded in the 13th century, and the other matches today’s choux pastry, found in English, German, and French cookbooks from the 1500s. This dough was sometimes baked, sometimes fried. By the 1700s, it was widely documented under names like *Pate a la Royale* or *Paste Royal*. In the 16th century, popelins were popular aristocratic desserts flavored with cheese or citrus (such as lemon peel or orange blossom water). They were made from a dough dried over a fire to remove water, called *pâte à chaud*. In the 1700s, royal chefs Jean Avice and Antoine Carême—the latter worked in Marie Antoinette’s court—adjusted the recipe, leading to the version now used for profiteroles. The name *pouplin* (meaning “baby” or “small child”), later *popelin* or *poupelin*, appears around 1349 for a cake made with flour and eggs. A persistent but fictional story claims choux pastry was invented in 1540 by Pantanelli and Popelini, pastry chefs of Queen Catherine de’ Medici. This tale, first mentioned in the 1700s, says Pantanelli created the dough in 1540 and used it for a cake called *pâte à Pantanelli*, with the name later shifting to *pâte à popelin* for popelins named after his successor Popelini. However, the story only appears in the 1890s in writings by pastry chef Pierre Lacam, and it is clearly false because poupelins existed long before the 1500s, and the name Popelini was derived from *popelin*, not the other way around.

To make the dough, butter and water are boiled, then flour is added. The mixture cooks a few minutes longer, then cools before enough eggs are beaten in to reach the right consistency. The boiling step gels the starch in the flour, allowing it to hold more water. This high moisture content is what creates steam during cooking, puffing the pastry without any raising agent—similar to Yorkshire pudding or David Eyre’s pancake.

Choux pastry is used for small puffs (also called choux), profiteroles, croquembouches, éclairs, religieuses, French crullers, beignets, and gâteau St-Honoré. It also appears in savory dishes like Parisian gnocchi, dumplings, chouquettes (unfilled choux with pearl sugar), pommes dauphine, and gougères. The dough is usually baked, but for beignets it is fried. In Spain and Latin America, churros are made from fried choux pastry, dusted with sugar, and dipped in thick hot chocolate for breakfast. In Italian cooking, choux pastry forms the base for zeppole di San Giuseppe, cream-filled pastries eaten on March 19 for Saint Joseph’s feast. In Austria, a variation of Marillenknödel—sweet apricot dumplings boiled in water—uses choux pastry; in that case, it stays relatively dense rather than puffing. After baking, choux pastries are sometimes filled with cream to make cream puffs or éclairs. A craquelin is topped with a crackly sugar coating and often filled with pastry cream, much like an éclair.

A chouquette is a small, round, hollow choux pastry covered with pearl sugar. Unlike éclairs, chouquettes are bite-sized and left unfilled inside. They come from Paris, France, and can be eaten any time of day, often for breakfast or as an afternoon snack.