Gougères

What's in a name? That which we call a gougère by any other name would taste just as sweet....

First we eat, then we do everything else. - M.F.K. Fisher

“At the beginning of the last century, the fine and delicate pastry that gourmets enjoy today did not exist. The pastry was rather coarse, because consumers, who were generally big eaters, were more interested in quantity than quality. It was still the reign of pouplins, gougères, talmousses, and cheese was included in most of the cakes. The Savoie biscuit and meringue were then the superlatives of fine pastry.”

Thus wrote Fernand Barthélemy in his 1906 article on The Future of French Pastry in Le Journal des Confiseurs, Pâtissiers, Glaciers professional newspaper. The gougère that he mentions as a “coarse” but popular treat at the beginning of the 1800s, is the subject of my post today. It’s difficult to see the gougère as an unrefined, heavy treat - honestly, it’s difficult to think of the gougère as a dessert; although made with cheese, the gougère is, at its heart, a choux, a light and airy cheese puff, delicate almost, that we serve today as an aperitif to accompany a glass of Champagne. 

For a long time, the gougère was considered a dish à la ménagère - a domestic dish, one made to serve to the family. “An excellent, easy-to-make dish that can replace entremets (small starters or dishes served in between courses) in small households and, in winter when vegetables are scarce, helps housewives vary their menus,” according to La Femme magazine, June 15, 1892, in the Housewives' Corner column. Joseph Favre even offers the recipe for gougères à la ménagère, the “homestyle gougère”, in his 1903 Dictionnaire Universel de Cuisine Pratique. A hearty dish, indeed. 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. 

You have read all about the creation and evolution of choux, and you have read all about the creation and the evolution that led us from the choux to the éclair, an oblong, cream-filled, iced version of the choux, in my previous posts. Over the course of food history, pastry chefs have struggled to find appropriate names for each variation on the choux, a new name created for each new flavor or shape transformation of the original puff, feeling obliged, for some curious reason, to clearly separate one from the other. Even the original name of the dough changed over time. 

From pâte à popelins to pâte à chaud to pâte à chaux to pâte à choux; poupelini or popelini baked in either one single large “cake” or small individual pastry puffs; profiteroles (which changed composition from savory to sweet); choux and poupelins (or popelin or pouplin); and all the variations from pain de la Mecque to les gimblettes to les salammbôs and les narcisses to pain à la duchesse to éclairs, whether filled with pastry cream, jam or preserves, or whipped cream, whether iced or dotted with pearl sugar or nuts and powdered sugar, or glazed with caramel. And then, of course, came the ramequins and the gougères.

The gougère. Or goyère or goière or gouière. Or is it ramequins? Finely grated cheese folded into the warm dough, shaped into single rounds or fingers or into one large cake or crown-shaped ring. Gougères. 

French pastry might be opulent, sophisticated. Delicious. Impressive. Maybe even daunting. But it is also mighty confusing. Most of you, I am guessing, know what gougères are: small, round, delicate, golden brown choux puffs in which cheese, usually a hard, flavourful, nutty cheese such as Gruyère or Parmesan, has been mixed into the dough, piped or dropped in small mounds onto a baking sheet, topped with a bit more of the cheese, then baked until puffed and browned. Yum. But it wasn’t always…

Pierre Lacam recounts the beginnings of the gougère in his extraordinary cookbook and history of pastry in France, Le glacier Classique et Artistique en France et en Italie in 1893: “At the beginning of this century (the 19th century, that is), a pastry chef from Paris, named Liénard, went to establish himself in Flogny, near Tonnerre (Yonne). He brought a specialty along with him: Ramequins, which were in vogue in Paris. Running through the small neighboring towns, basket hanging around his neck, with his apprentice, he earned money. But everything has its time. What did he do? The public finding them too small, he made them into crowns (large crown-shaped rings), and called them gougères. These crowns made of choux pastry and Gruyère cheese were very popular, which allowed him to make his small fortune. All of Champagne began to make them; but the reputation remained Troyes. And we still say: Gougères de Troyes. The bourgeois of this town offered themselves a gougère as a treat.” 

While I have complete faith in Pierre Lacam, we do know that the gougère existed a before the turn of the 19th century: Thomas Dyche has a mention of gougère already in 1756 in his Nouveau Dictionnaire Universel des Arts et des Sciences, François, Latin et Anglois traduit de l’anglois (sic), defining it as “a type of cake made with eggs and aged or mature cheese.” But the very first mention of a gougère is thought to be in a document dated 1571 which included the menu for a banquet in the city of Sens, a gougère listed as one of the selections of dessert. And then the gougère seems to have gotten lost between that banquet menu and Dyche’s dictionary, but as we have learned in the past, something must have existed already for quite a while and been, at the most, moderately popular for it to find its way into a dictionary, and in this case, many dictionaries. 

By the time Jean-Charles Laveaux published the Nouveau Dictionnaire de la Langue Française in 1820 and Victor Vergé the Dictionnaire Abrégé de l'Académie Française in 1832, both defining the gougère as “a cake of breadcrumbs, eggs, and cheese”, the word, if not the exact recipe, seems well established.

And yet the gougère doesn’t seem to appear in any cookbooks during this time so we are made to guess that the gougère is indeed one large “cake” rather than individual puffs, and we are led to infer by the word gâteau or cake that it was considered a dessert rather than a savory dish. In fact, a story in the January 12,1861 issue of Le Monde Illustré includes this line describing a banquet meal “For dessert, for variety, we drank a brew of white beer. The dessert was a sight to behold. There was a huge gougère and an apple pie as large as the moon.” As late as 1928 when Austin de Croze published Les Plats Régionaux de France it was considered to be a dessert: de Croze lists the gougère as a “douceur” or dessert specialty of Bourgogne. His gougère is still, in 1928, shaped into one large crown or ring. “Eat it while warm,” he advises, “accompanied by a Chablis carafe 1918.”

Recipe in verse for a Burgundy Cake (gâteau bourguignon) in La Pâtisserie Française Illustrée April 1936

But let’s back up for a minute. Back in the mid-19th century, dictionaries in hand yet nary a cookbook, we aren’t quite sure exactly what a gougère is, other than that it is made with eggs and cheese.  But what about these ramequins that Liénard brought to Flogny and Troyes that were so in vogue in Paris by the early 19th century that he turned into the gougère?

The great chef and our old friend, Marie-Antoine (Antonin) Carême, includes a recipe for ramequins in his chapter Warm Entremets and entremets in choux pastry in general  in 1815. They are, without a doubt, the gougères that we are so familiar with today. He makes a pâte à choux, a choux pastry dough, adds grated Parmesan cheese, a “good pinch” of mignonette pepper, a small amount of sugar, and a couple of spoons of whipping cream to the dough. He recommends mounding the ramequins “a little smaller than choux” before brushing with egg wash and baking. Interestingly, he explains that adding a bit of sugar to the recipe “softens the sharpness of the cheese”, something - the sharp cheesiness of the cheese - we like today as we eat cheese puffs as a savory treat but sensible if one wants to serve this as a dessert. 

One of the earliest recipes for ramequins to be found is in Le Cuisinier François, François Pierre de La Varenne’s master cookbook of 1651. We know that choux pastry and the choux puff was invented in the mid-1500s in the royal kitchens of Catherine de Medici, wife of Henri II, in France, and yet La Varenne’s ramequins are not choux-based. That won’t happen for a couple of centuries, and it is mighty interesting watching the evolution of this confection. His ramequins are cheese-based; he blends aged cheese with butter, onion, a lot of pepper, and spreads this on bread which is then grilled. François Massialot’s ramequins au fromage, cheese ramequins, in his 1691 cookbook Le Cuisinier Roial et Bourgeois move one step closer to the cheese puff; he instructs the reader to make a finely chopped “farce” with cheese and parsley, adding brewer’s yeast to make them puff up. He then slices bread, the slices cut into small squares, the farce spread on each square, after “dipping your knife” in beaten eggs. The ramequins are dotted with a little butter and baked. He offers a second version of ramequins in which the cheese, blended with butter, two pinches flour, 3 egg yolks, pepper and a bit of lemon juice, is simply spread on a plate and grilled. Again, this version seems to be moving closer to the choux.

Jean Avice, famed pastry chef and mentor and teacher of Carême, is said to finally have added the cheese to choux dough and created the ramequin. And Carême puts the recipe down in black on white in 1815 in Le Pâtissier Royal Parisien. Comte Cousin de Courchamps names them Choux-ramequins à la Royale in his 1853 Dictionnaire Général de la Cuisine Française Ancienne et Moderne, and we do see other chef referring to them as choux à la royale, among others Alexandre Dumas in the Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine in 1873. 

Individual cheese puffs continue to be called ramequins for some time. But what about the gougère? Pierre Lacam offers a recipe for the gougère in 1865 in Le Nouveau Pâtissier-Glacier Français et Étranger, an extremely blunt recipe just for Gruyère cheese to be added to a pâte à choux which is then “dresser en couronne” or arranged in a single large wreath or crown-shaped ring. He has no recipe for ramequins. 

But in Le Mémorial Historique et Géographique de la Pâtisserie published in 1900, Lacam offers recipes for ramequins (shaped like individual round puffs), gougères de Troyes (shaped in rings), and finally les petites gougères (shaped into small, individual rings). 

Ah, the French pastry chef….

But why the name gougère and what did it mean? I have found a few…interesting definitions. 

In 1865 according to Anatole Boucherie in his Patois de la Saintonge (the dialect of an old province of France), the verb gouger “is synonymous with stuffing your face” - he likens it to force-feeding geese or ducks to fatten them. “(Gouge) was the name,” he continues, “given to girls of ill repute, whose guilty pleasures were gluttony and excessive indulgence (la gourmandise et la gloutonnerie).” I like to think that our little pastry chef Liénard, forced to make bigger and bigger ramequins to satisfy his hungry and gluttonous clients, carefully selected the name gougère from the noun gouge and the verb gouger.

As we move into the late 1800s, we continue to see the gougère, occasionally referred to as gouyère, as a “a kind of cake made with fromage blanc (a kind of creamy cottage cheese), eggs and breadcrumbs (Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe Siècle by Pierre Larousse 1872) and ramequins made quite like a croque monsieur (La sauce, la cuisine chez soi (hygiène, simplicité, délicatesse) : cuisine des célibataires, cuisine des diabétiques by Jenny Touzin 1889). We see gougère de Troyes made with Gruyere and shaped into crowns or wreaths, Gougères à la ménagère in which the eggs are separated, the yolks beaten into the batter, the whites beaten until stiff then folded in, and gougères à la suissesse made with milk and shaped into sticks or fingers and topped with strips of Emmenthal cheese, dusted with pepper, then topped with another layer of the choux dough (Joseph Favre). And Urbain Dubois (1872) offers a gougère au fromage à la Suisse in which the dough is just spread thinly on a large baking sheet, topped with strips of gruyère, baked, then sliced into strips to serve in a mound. 

In 1888, Urbain Dubois offers us a dizzying gougère au fromage, the poupelin au fromage, and the ramequins au fromage, each a variation on the other, more or less butter or flour, eggs whole or separated, and whether one mixes only the Parmesan into the dough while topping with the Gruyère or mixing in both and topping with one or the other. 

Dizzying, indeed.

By the end of the century, things start to even out as the recipe for the gougère begins showing up in women’s magazines and food columns, something that evidently necessitates simplifying the recipe for the home cook and to fit into the word count of a magazine column. Through the first half of the 20th century, the gougère is considered a simple dish for simple households. About this time, as both - or one or the other - the gougère or ramequins continue to show up in cookbooks, the recipes for the base choux recipes begin to meld and become one, the only difference between the two confections being the size. 

From L’Art Culinaire Français, 1950

The gougère slowly becomes more refined, as well. Prosper Montagné is more specific in his shaping of the gougère into a ring or crown in the first edition of the Larousse Gastronomique in 1938: “Using a tablespoon, scoop the dough into egg-sized portions and gradually place them in a buttered pie dish, one next to the other in the shape of a crown.” His ramequins are no longer mini gougère rings, but puffs as we know them today: “a small pastry made with choux puff dough and cheese is still called a ramequin”; these ramequins are shaped with either a pastry bag with tip or with a spoon into small puffs. 

The 1950 L’Art Culinaire Français also clearly differentiates the ramequins, also now shaped into small round puffs, and the gougère bourguignonne, shaped into one large crown or ring, explaining that while the two are made with the same ingredients, they are shaped differently. 

François Bernard’s Les Recettes Faciles, 1965

It isn’t until 1965 and François Bernard’s Les Recettes Faciles do we finally see the two combined into one, in other words, her gougère can be shaped and served as one large ring or crown or as individual puffs. No more ramequins…. the individual cheese puffs are now also called gougères.  A couple decades later, the 1984 Larousse Gastronomique defines the gougère as a puff or crown of choux pastry topped with cheese (Gruyère, Comté or Emmenthal), peppered and baked. He explains that “In Burgundy, cold gougères traditionally accompany wine tastings in the cellars, but they are also served warm as a starter.”

It took 4 centuries for the gougère and the ramequin to fuse into one and the recipe to simplify and streamline into one. No longer a dessert, these fine and flavorful puffs are the perfect accompaniment to a before dinner or aperitif drink or glass of wine or Champagne. And while slightly technical, they are, if the directions are followed carefully, quite easy and fun to make. And sublime to eat. 

Gougères

6 tablespoons (90 grams) unsalted butter

½ cup (125 ml) water

½ cup (125 ml) milk

½ teaspoon salt

Grindings of black pepper

Pinch nutmeg

1 cup (140/145 grams) flour

4 large eggs, broken into a bowl ready to use

1 lightly heaped cup grated cheese (* see note below)

To top:

1 egg lightly beaten to blend

Extra grated cheese

• For the cheese: Use fresh Parmesan, Gruyère, or another hard, mature, flavorful, nutty cheese such as comté, Emmental, or Abondance - I use half Parmesan + half one of the other cheeses, grated then lightly piled in the measuring cup. Use pre-grated or grate your own. For the topping, use either, but I prefer the Gruyère/comté/Emmental/Abondance.

• If making a large gougère in a ring, don’t hesitate to draw a circle on the parchment paper on which to place your mounds of dough so your crown or ring comes out a beautiful circle.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Have ready a large baking sheet lined with oven parchment paper.

Place the butter, water, milk, salt, a few generous grindings of black pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg in a medium saucepan. Place over medium-low heat and heat just until the butter is completely melted and the liquid is steaming. 

Remove the saucepan from the heat and dump in the flour all at once. Using a wooden spoon, stir vigorously until a dough forms and keep stirring until the dough is smooth. If there are tiny lumps of flour, don’t worry as these will come out in the next step.

Place the saucepan back on the medium-low heat and, stirring constantly, cook the dough for just about 2 or 3 minutes to dry it out. Stir (rather vigorously) around and up from the bottom of the pot, pressing out the tiny lumps of flour as you stir, turn, and fold the dough. 

Remove the saucepan from the heat. I scrape the dough into a large pyrex mixing bowl. You’ll be adding the 4 eggs now but one at a time, stirring each egg (vigorously) into the dough to incorporate completely before adding the next and the next until all 4 have been added and the dough is smooth. (this is a slippery process until the egg is worked into the dough, but keep stirring!)

Stir in the grated cheese(s). 

For the crown: Using a tablespoon, scoop the dough out and push onto the lined baking sheet forming small mounds (keep them light, making sure not to pack the dough). Place the mounds of dough close together, leaving just a tiny space between them for rising/puffing, but unlike the individual puffs, you want these to fuse together. 

For individual puffs: Using a tablespoon, scoop the dough out and push onto the lined baking sheet forming small mounds (keep them light, making sure not to pack the dough). Space the mounds an inch or so apart from each other to leave room for them to rise and puff separately. 

When you’ve filled your baking sheet, dab each mound of dough all over but lightly with a bit of the beaten egg, top with a bit of grated cheese.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes, depending on how big or small you make your gougère puffs. I have the tendency to remove the gougère(s) a bit too early which means they are undercooked in the center. Leave them in until they are super well puffed and a deep golden brown color. 

I think they are best eaten warm.

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