Puits d’Amour

A sweet filling sits in a case made of puff pastry or choux pastry. Puits d’amour, whose name means “well of love,” is a French pastry in which a sweet filling is placed in the hollow of pastry that has been baked first. Some have vanilla cream with sugar sprinkled on top and caramelized, while others are filled with fruit jam, and their appearance varies with the pastry and the filling. The large wells of the 18th century even had decorations suggesting chains and a well bucket.

Stacking a puff pastry disc and ring offset by 90 degrees

The method of combining a disc-shaped base with a ring-shaped rim is still passed down today. Two circles are cut from laminated puff pastry, and the center of one is removed to make a ring. The edge of the chilled pastry base is moistened, and the ring is rotated 90 degrees, placed on top and gently pressed to adhere.

When the rim is brushed with egg, the brush is moved along the curve of the ring. If egg runs onto the cut edges, it tends to keep the pastry layers from rising. After brushing, the pastry is chilled; once it has been baked and has puffed up, it is cooled and the center is pressed down to form the shape of a well. What surrounds and supports the filling is not a wall of thick dough in a single mass, but layers of pastry that have risen in the oven.

Filling with cold cream and caramelizing the sugar on top

Vanilla custard is made by mixing egg yolks, sugar, milk, starch and other ingredients and cooking them while stirring. Taking it off the heat, adding butter, covering it so that it does not dry out, chilling it and then folding in whipped cream produces a filling with a light texture.

The cream is filled into the cooled case, mounded slightly on top and sprinkled with sugar. Caramelizing the sugar with a hot iron or the oven’s top heat forms a thin layer of hard caramel over the cream. Some versions are left to rest and then go through the caramelizing step once more. It is a pastry in which the smoothness of the vanilla cream, the hardness of the caramelized sugar and the fragility of the puff pastry are enjoyed together.

At Stohrer, a long-established pastry shop in Paris, puits d’amour is also one of the classics that have been carried on. There are also versions in which a ring of choux pastry is placed on a puff pastry base, so the case is made from two doughs.

Captieux’s shallow choux and cream lightened with egg white

The version loved in Captieux, in southwestern France, is a small choux pastry case heaped with crème Chiboust, with the sugar on top caramelized. Because whipped egg whites are folded into the custard, the way air is incorporated differs from versions that add whipped cream.

According to the family history told by Maison Seguin, the father learned this distinctive recette (formula and method) from a pastry chef in Pau and opened a shop in Captieux after the Second World War. His children took over in the early 1980s, and in 2013 Brice Leguillon took over the business and the method. Passed from a craftsman in another town to a family-run shop and then on to a successor, the method became a Captieux specialty.

In one method for making the choux cases, water, milk and butter are brought to a boil, taken off the heat, and the flour is added all at once. The dough is put back on the heat to drive off moisture and transferred to another bowl, and the eggs are mixed in one at a time. The dough is piped in small amounts and baked without being fully dried; after baking, the center of the dough, which has settled flat, is pressed with a finger to shape it into a shallow cup.

Maison Seguin regards this pastry as delicate and caramelizes the sugar on top just before finishing.

Some methods for crème Chiboust use Italian meringue, made by pouring hot sugar syrup into whipped egg whites. Gelatin is dissolved in cooked custard, the meringue is folded in, and the cream is piped into the cases. After the cream has cooled, sugar is applied evenly and caramelized with a hot iron or a torch. Cream filled into layered puff pastry and egg-white cream heaped onto shallow baked choux have both been passed down under the same name of “well.”

Versions filled with raspberry jam

Jam-filled puff pastry versions are still made today. The case, baked from a stacked disc and ring, is cooled and dusted with powdered sugar, and raspberry jam is filled into the center. In contrast to the cream-filled versions with caramelized sugar on top, here the sweet-tart flavor of fruit takes center stage. In both, the hollowed pastry is baked first and cooled before the filling goes in.

Well-shaped decorations and fruit fillings in a 1733 cookbook

Volume 2 of Vincent La Chapelle’s “The Modern Cook,” published in London in 1733, contains two “puits d’amour,” one large and one small.

The large one was an elaborate construction: a case made by stacking dough with its center cut out onto a puff pastry disc, assembled with separately baked S-shaped pieces of pastry and chain-shaped decorations. It was filled with redcurrant jelly or apricot marmalade, and small choux with the same filling were also used as decoration. The name “well” was expressed not only in the hollow center but also in a design that even suggested chains and a well bucket.

The small one was made by stacking a small ring onto a puff pastry disc about the size of the rim of a glass, baking it, then sprinkling it with sugar and glazing the surface with a hot fire iron. It was filled with a sweet filling of redcurrant or apricot and covered with a small cut-out piece of dough as a lid. It was a fruit well, unlike today’s cream-filled versions.

The name “well of love” and a court legend whose dates do not match

A name linking “love” with a form that holds sweetness in a hollow has also been taken as hinting at romance. A commentary by the Japan Federation of Western Confectionery Associations also notes its romantic quality and the popularity of a pastry name that was provocative for its time.

The well-known story that Louis XV had it made for Madame de Pompadour has a gap in dates. The Palace of Versailles records that the two met in 1745, while the 1733 recette came earlier. Any romance or court event behind the name is not clearly known.

Glossary