Today’s Katakana Tuesday, but it is slightly different from all the others I talked about so far.
Anyway, what is シュークリーム? If you thought it was a shoe polisher (“shoe cream”), your katakana reading is not bad. However, that is not it! It is a “cream puff”! Why?
That’s because “shu-kuri-mu” is not from English but from the French word, “chou crème”!
They are very popular in Japan! Cheap ones you can buy in supermarkets usually have custard only inside but most upmarket ones have custard and whipped cream in it. They are delicious!
BTW, custard in Japanese is カスタードクリーム (kasuta-do_kuri-mu) whether or not real cream is used in it. “Fresh cream” in Japanese is “生クリーム (nama_kuri-mu)” which means "raw cream." If you buy un-whipped “ホイップクリーム (hoippu_kuri-mu, the transliteration of "whip cream")” in a container in a supermarket, it is not really cream but made of vegetable fat. I don’t know whether or not a particular patisserie uses real cream or a mock one…
