Éclair
- For the camera company, please see Eclair (camera). For anime character, see Éclair (Kiddy Grade).
An éclair is a pastry made with choux pastry (profiterole dough). The dough is piped into an oblong shape with a pastry bag and baked until it is crisp and hollow inside. Once cool, the pastry then is traditionally filled with a coffee- or chocolate-flavored[1] pastry cream (crème pâtissière), custard or whipped cream, and topped with fondant icing of the same flavor as the filling.[2] Other fillings include pistachio- and rum-flavored custard, fruit-flavored fillings, or chestnut purée.
In some parts of the United States, long johns are marketed under the name éclairs, though the two are not identical. A long john uses donut pastry and is typically filled with vanilla pudding, making it a simpler and inexpensive alternative to the éclair.
Origin of the éclair
Little is known about the origin of the éclair, but it is known to have originated in France around the turn of the nineteenth century.[citation needed] "Éclair" is French for flash, though there is no known linkage to this. Many food historians speculate that éclairs were first made by Marie-Antoine Carême, a famous pastry chef for French royalty.
The Oxford English Dictionary traces the term "eclair" in the English language to 1861. The first known English-language recipe for éclairs appears in the Boston Cooking School Cook Book by Mrs. D.A. Lincoln, published in 1884.
Notes
- ^ Montagné, Prosper, Larousse gastronomique : the new American edition of the world's greatest culinary encyclopedia, Jenifer Harvey Lang, ed., New York: Crown Publishers, 1988, p. 401 ISBN 9780517570326
- ^ Ibid.