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Five Food Finds about the Chocolate Eclair:

  1. An éclair is an oblong pastry made with choux dough filled with a cream and topped with icing.
  2.  In French, “éclair” the dessert may have gotten its name from the “flash” of frosting that glistens across its top.
  3. When baking the perfect chocolate éclair, sufficient steam is essential to the construction of the inner cavern that will be filled with vanilla cream.
  4. MasterChef India pastry experts spent three days constructing a 26 foot tall chocolate éclair pyramid in 2010, taking the world record, according to Limca.
  5. The éclair originated during the 19th century in France. It was called “pain à la duchesse” or “petite duchesse” until 1850.

Today’s Food History

  • 1633 Galileo was forced by the Inquisition in Rome to renounce his theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun.
  • 1847 Supposedly, Hanson Crockett Gregory, of Rockport, Maine, created the doughnut. His mother’s fry-cakes were not cooked in the center, so he cut the centers out so they would no longer have undercooked centers. (I have doubts about this story)
  • 1947 During the early evening Holt, Missouri received a world record 12 inches (300 mm) of rainfall in 42 minutes.
  • 1947 Howard Kaylan of the music group ‘The Turtles’ was born.
  • 1992 M.F.K. Fisher (Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher) died. Fisher was an American food critic and writer, author of various articles, essays and books about food, and she also translated Brillat-Savarin’s ‘The Physiology of Taste’ in 1949.
  • 2002 Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer died. She wrote the ‘Ann Landers’ advice column. Her twin sister Pauline Esther, under the pen name Abigail Van Buren, wrote the‘Dear Abby’ advice column.

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