 "Nun's farts" or "nun's puffs" are a light, airy dessert pastry. | |
| Alternative names | Nun's farts |
|---|---|
| Type | Pastry |
| Course | Dessert |
| Place of origin | France |
| Serving temperature | Hot or room temperature |
| Main ingredients | Butter, milk, flour, sugar, eggs; sometimes honey |
Nun's puffs (also known less euphemistically as nun's farts) are a dessert pastry originally from France, where they were known as pets de nonne. They are now also produced in French Canada, the United States, England, and Spain.
The recipe is included in an 1856 "cook book" and Oxford University's Household Encyclopedia from 1859. [1] [2] The dessert is made from butter, milk, flour, sugar, eggs, and sometimes honey. [3] Recipes call for pan frying (traditionally in lard), re-frying and then baking, or baking straight away. [4] [5] The best-established recipes suggest cooking the butter, milk, and flour in a pan then adding the eggs (whites last) and sprinkling sugar on the mixture before baking. [3] Choux paste is also cooked twice, to prepare the paste and to "transform it into puffs". It dates to medieval times and is a cross between a batter and a dough. [6] A cream filling can also be inserted. [4]
The dessert has been described as "light tender morsels" that are "heavenly". [3] Another description describes them as a "cream puff batter that bakes like a popover". [7] Recipes for nun's puffs are also included in two Virginia cookbooks. [5] [8]
The similarly-named French-Canadian dessert pets de sœurs (literally "farts of [religious] sisters") is sometimes confused with this dessert, but actually is a completely different pastry.
The lightness of deep fried beignets is said to have inspired the French name pets de nonne (literally "nun's farts"). [6] The French Wikipedia identifies an earlier term for the dessert, paix-de-nonne ("nun's peace"), which is pronounced the same as pets de nonne, and likely the origin of the later term. The origin of the English name "nun's puffs" is said to be a mystery. [3]
A certain butter mixture is called "nun's butter", made with butter, sugar, wine and nutmeg. [9] Nun's farts are one of several foods that reference the church (others include nun's sighs, Religieuse (pastry), La religieuse (the cheese crust that forms at the bottom of a fondue pot), Cappuccino, angel food cake, cardinal mousse, hermit's food, twelfth-night cake, scripture cake, Christmas cake, Quaker cake, Jerusalem pudding, Jésuite and devil's food cake). [10]
Pastry refers to a variety of doughs, as well as the sweet and savoury baked goods made from them. These goods are often called pastries as a synecdoche, and the dough may be accordingly called pastry dough for clarity. Sweetened pastries are often described as bakers' confectionery. Common pastry dishes include pies, tarts, quiches, croissants, and pasties.
Beignet is a type of deep-fried pastry of French origin. It is commonly made from pâte à choux, but can also be made using rice flour or yeast-leavened batters. Beignets can be served in a variety of preparations, the most common being dusted with confectioner’s sugar. The pastry is popular in French, Italian, and American cuisines.
Dough is a thick, malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from grains or from leguminous or chestnut crops. Dough is typically made by mixing flour with a small amount of water or other liquid and sometimes includes yeast or other leavening agents, as well as ingredients such as fats or flavourings.
A cruller is a deep-fried pastry popular in parts of Europe and North America. Regarded as a form of cake doughnut in the latter, it is typically either made of a string of dough that is folded over and twisted twice to create its signature shape, or formed from a rectangle of dough with a cut in the center allowing it to be pulled over and through itself to produce distinctive twists in the sides of the pastry.
A profiterole, chou à la crème, also known alternatively as a cream puff (US), is a filled French choux pastry ball with a typically sweet and moist filling of whipped cream, custard, pastry cream, or ice cream. The puffs may be embellished or left plain or garnished with chocolate sauce, caramel, or a dusting of powdered sugar.
Funnel cake is a regional sweet food popular in North America, found mainly at carnivals and amusement parks. It is made by deep-frying batter.
A rissole is "a ball or flattened cake of chopped meat, fish, or vegetables mixed with herbs or spices, then coated in breadcrumbs and fried."
Choux pastry, or pâte à choux, is a delicate pastry dough used in many pastries. The essential ingredients are butter, water, flour and eggs.
Kuih are bite-sized snack or dessert foods commonly found in Southeast Asia and China. It is a fairly broad term which may include items that would be called cakes, cookies, dumplings, pudding, biscuits, or pastries in English and are usually made from rice or glutinous rice. In China, where the term originates from, kueh or koé (粿) in the Min Nan languages refers to snacks which are typically made from rice but can occasionally be made from other grains such as wheat. The term kuih is widely used in Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore, kueh is used in Singapore and Indonesia, kue is used in Indonesia only, all three refer to sweet or savoury desserts.
A génoise, also known as Genoese cake or Genovese cake, is a French sponge cake named after the city of Genoa and associated with French cuisine. It was created by François Massialot in the late 17th century. Instead of using chemical leavening, air is suspended in the batter during mixing to provide volume.
The St. Honoré cake, usually known by its French name gâteau St-Honoré, and also sometimes called St. Honoratus cake, is a pastry dessert named for the French patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, Saint Honoré or Honoratus, Bishop of Amiens. In 1847, it was invented by Auguste Julien, at the Chiboust bakery on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris.
Puff-puff is a traditional snack made of fried dough and eaten across Africa, especially in the west of the continent. The name "puff-puff" is from Nigeria, but many other names and varieties of the pastry exist.
A religieuse is a French pastry made of a small choux pastry case stacked on top of a larger one, both filled with crème pâtissière, commonly flavoured with chocolate or mocha. Each case is topped with a ganache of the same flavour as the filling, then attached to each other using piped buttercream icing. It is a type of éclair.
Nun's farts, is a French Canadian dessert that is made from pie dough; often from left over Tourtière dough, that is layered with butter, brown sugar, then rolled, sliced, placed in a pan, covered with additional brown sugar, and finally baked. It is called Pets de Soeur as it was served by nuns at Catholic schools in some parts of the province of Quebec and Acadia.
