Gougères
Golden choux puffs loaded with Gruyère, the quintessential champagne companion — a Burgundian tradition first documented in a 1571 Sens banquet menu and still made the same way half a millennium later.
- 0.5 cupwater
- 0.5 cupwhole milk
- 8 tbspunsalted butter(cut into pieces)
- 1 tspkosher salt
- 0.25 tspblack pepper
- 1 cupall-purpose flour
- 4 largeeggs
- 1.5 cupsGruyère cheese(finely shredded, divided)
- 0.25 tspnutmeg(freshly grated)
Unbaked gougères can be frozen on sheet, then stored in bag up to 1 month. Bake from frozen, adding 5 minutes. Baked gougères are best fresh but can be recrisped at 350°F for 5 minutes.
- 1Preheat oven to 400°F and line baking sheets with parchment
- 2Combine water, milk, butter, salt, and pepper in saucepan over medium heat
- 3Bring to boil, ensuring butter is completely melted
- 4Remove from heat and add flour all at once, stirring vigorously
- 5Return to medium heat and stir until dough forms ball and pulls away from sides, about 2 minutes
- 6Transfer to mixer bowl and beat on medium 1 minute to cool slightly
- 7Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each until smooth
- 8Stir in 1 cup Gruyère and nutmeg
- 9Pipe or spoon 1-inch mounds onto prepared sheets, 2 inches apart
- 10Top each with pinch of remaining cheese
- 11Bake 20-25 minutes until puffed and deep golden - do not open oven door
- 12Serve warm
The dough should be smooth and pull away from the pan cleanly. Add eggs one at a time - the dough will look curdled at first but will come together. Don't open the oven during baking or they'll deflate. Gruyère is traditional; Comté or aged Cheddar also work well.
Gougères are the rare party food whose documented history stretches back over 450 years. The word first appears in the culinary record on the menu of a 1571 banquet in the city of Sens in Burgundy, and in 1752 the Trévoux dictionary defined it as a type of cake made with eggs and aged cheese. The food writer Grimod de la Reynière confirmed their Burgundian origins in his influential 1804 Almanach des Gourmands, placing them firmly in the culinary landscape of eastern France. Their evolution into the airy choux puff we know today is credited by pastry historian Pierre Lacam, writing in his 1893 Le glacier Classique, to a Parisian pastry chef named Liénard who settled in the village of Flogny-la-Chapelle near Tonnerre in Burgundy in the early 19th century. Liénard brought with him the Parisian fashion for ramequins — choux pastry baked with cheese — and adapted the recipe to Burgundian tastes, building his living on the popularity of the result. Flogny-la-Chapelle still celebrates its claim with an annual gougère festival each third Sunday of May. The 1984 edition of Larousse Gastronomique codified the modern gougère and noted the Burgundian tradition of serving them cold during wine tastings in cellar caves — a custom in which the slight saline nuttiness of Gruyère or Comté cuts through tannic reds and frames the minerality of white Burgundy. That same quality makes them an ideal champagne companion: the fat and salt in the cheese provide exactly the contrast that makes a wine's acidity and bubbles sing.