Profiterole

Profiterole is a small choux pastry ball split and filled with ice cream or cream, stacked into a pyramid and drenched in warm chocolate sauce. It's France's ice-cream éclair — the same choux dough as its cousin, but round rather than piped long, and built to be filled cold rather than with a set cream.

What it actually is

Choux pastry — flour, butter and egg cooked into a paste on the stove before being piped and baked, which is what makes it puff hollow — is baked into small, round balls with a crisp shell and an airy, empty centre. Once cooled, each ball is split and filled with ice cream or a sweetened whipped cream, and several are stacked into a pyramid on the plate before a warm chocolate sauce is poured over the whole thing at the table.

The sauce has to be poured at the very last moment — poured too early, it melts the ice cream filling before anyone gets a bite, which is the one real timing risk in the whole dish.

How it's served

• Stacked in a pyramid, three or more balls per plate.
• With warm chocolate sauce poured at the table, immediately before eating.
• With ice cream filling, as the classic version, though a pastry cream filling also exists.

Writing it on a menu

• Flag gluten, egg and dairy; the choux shell and filling carry all three.
• Say whether the filling is ice cream or pastry cream, since the two are genuinely different desserts under the same name.
• Note that the chocolate sauce is poured at the table, right before serving, since that's part of the presentation and timing matters.
• Mention if you make the choux pastry in-house, since a fresh, properly puffed shell is a real point of craft distinct from a pre-made shell.