What is a chouquette?
A chouquette is a small round bun of pâte à choux, or choux pastry, scattered with pearl sugar before baking and left unfilled. Butter, water, flour and eggs make the paste; the sugar on top is the entire finish.
What defines it is what it does not have. The same paste, piped in a long shape and filled with pastry cream and glazed, is an éclair. Piped round and filled with cream or ice cream, it is a profiterole. Left empty with sugar on it, it is a chouquette. Nothing about the pastry changes between them.
That is worth stating plainly, because the French choux vocabulary is usually presented as a list of separate pastries to be learned. It is closer to one pastry with a column of additions, the same shape the pastry creams take, where five of six are one cooked custard with one thing folded in.
| Name | Added | On top | Filled | What it becomes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| chouquette | nothing | pearl sugar, before baking | no | The plain member: the shell on its own. |
| profiterole | a cream or ice-cream filling | often chocolate sauce | yes | The same shell, filled and sauced. |
| eclair | creme patissiere | a poured glaze, classically chocolate or coffee | yes | The same shell piped long instead of round, filled with the pastry cream the technique section covers, and glazed. |
Only the members the sources support are listed. The family is larger than this, and the rest are left out rather than asserted.
Why pearl sugar, and why ordinary sugar will not do
The sugar on a chouquette goes by two names in French, sucre en grains and sucre perlé, and both mean the same thing: a coarse, compressed sugar in irregular pieces. It is not a decorative preference. Pearl sugar is coarse enough to hold its shape through the oven, so it stays visible and gives a crunch against a hollow, tender bun.
Ordinary granulated sugar dissolves into the surface. The result is a sweeter chouquette with nothing on it, which is a different thing and a duller one. This is the same ingredient, chosen for the same reason, that finishes a Swedish kanelbulle: one coarse sugar, two traditions, both relying on it not melting away.
What the name and the history do and do not tell you
Chou is a cabbage, and it is the shape that earns the name: a piped mound of choux paste puffs into something round and slightly ruffled. Chouquette is its diminutive, a small chou.
The word has a longer history than the pastry as it is now. It was in use in the sixteenth century for small savoury spheres, and the sweet sense dates from the late seventeenth. The chouquette in its present form is usually attributed to the nineteenth century, and usually attributed is the accurate phrase, because that attribution is reported rather than documented. When the plain sugared version settled into the form sold in every French bakery today is not established here.
Where it leads
The useful next step from a chouquette is the filling it does not have. Every filled member of this family runs on crème pâtissière or one of its derivatives, and that cream is itself a single cooked base with one addition per name, the same logic as the table above, one level down. The doughs, creams and blind-bake specifications are collected in the technique section, and the French terms used across this site are in the glossary.
Questions about chouquettes
What is a chouquette?
A small round bun of choux pastry, scattered with pearl sugar before baking and left unfilled. It is the same paste as a profiterole or an éclair with nothing inside it.
What is the difference between a chouquette and a profiterole?
The filling. A profiterole is the same choux bun filled with cream or ice cream and often sauced; a chouquette is left empty, with pearl sugar as the whole of the finish.
Can granulated sugar replace pearl sugar?
Not for the same result. Pearl sugar is coarse enough to survive the oven and stay visible and crunchy; granulated sugar dissolves into the surface, giving a sweeter bun with nothing on it.
Why is it called a chouquette?
From chou, cabbage, for the shape a piped mound of choux paste takes as it puffs. Chouquette is the diminutive, a small chou.
How old are chouquettes?
The word is older than the pastry’s present form: it was used in the sixteenth century for small savoury spheres and took its sweet sense in the late seventeenth. The plain sugared chouquette is usually attributed to the nineteenth century, but that is reported rather than documented.