The Universe of Discourse

Petard corrections
Eric Cholet has written in to mention that he is familiar with the fried choux pastry that I mentioned yesterday, but under the name pets de nonne, not pets de soeurs, as I said. (Nonne, of course, is "nun". The word soeur is literally "sister", but in this context means "nun". ) I had cited On Food and Cooking as mentioning pets de soeurs, but it agrees with Eric, not with me.

It appears, though, that many people do use the name pets de soeurs to refer to these fritters, and some people also use it to refer to a kind of soda-raised cinnamon roll. Citations to various cookbooks are available through the usual searches.

Eric also points out that petard is the current word for a firecracker, and also now refers to a doobie. I was already aware of this because pictures of those things appeared when I did Google image seach for petard. Thank you, Eric.

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