A Profiterole or cream puff ( U.S.) is a food made from a small, round baked choux pastry filled with a sweet or savoury filling. The most common form nowadays is a dessert filled with whipped cream or pastry cream, and often served with chocolate sauce or a caramel glaze.

Preparation
The choux pastry is piped through a pastry bag into small balls and baked until they puff up and become largely hollow. It is filled by slicing the choux, filling, and reassembling, or by injecting into a slit or hole with a pastry bag.

Sweet profiteroles

The most common dessert presentations involve a pastry cream, whipped cream, or ice cream filling, and are served plain, with chocolate sauce, or with a crisp caramel glaze. They can also be topped with powdered sugar, frosting, or fruit.

Filled and glazed with caramel, they are assembled into a type of pièce montée called croquembouches, often served at weddings in France. Profiteroles are also used as the outer wall of Gâteau St-Honoré.

Savory profiteroles
Savory profiteroles are filled with a cheese mixture, game puree, etc. and are generally used as an hors d'oeuvre or a garnish or dumpling for soup.

History
The word (also spelled prophitrole, profitrolle, profiterolle)[2] has existed in English since the 16th century. The original meaning in both English and French is unclear, but later it came to mean a kind of roll 'baked under the ashes'.

A 17th-century French recipe for a Potage de profiteolles or profiterolles describes a soup of dried small breads simmered in almond broth and garnished with cockscombs, truffles, and so on.

The current meaning appears to be 19th century.

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