This Food in History #16 Mille Feuille

Aug 24

Aug 24 This Food in History #16 Mille Feuille

Hello and welcome to this episode of This Food in History! We will be visiting France to look at a dessert that my father loves but can never find, mille-Feuille!

Mille-Feuille seems to translate to one thousand leaves, sheets or layers and refers to the puff pastry that is used in 3 layers of this pastry. The pastry is folded over itself and rolled many times to create flaky, crisp layers of pastry. In between these layers, the traditional construction has us using pastry cream and a sweet topping, either of powdered sugar, icing and more commonly in the modern day, chocolate.

Here in the states, people might know mille-feuille as Napoleon. However it actually uses an almond pastry cream making it just different enough, though you can find many names in various countries in the world that also have local variations. .

In England, New Zealand, and Australia it can be found as a vanilla slice, custard slice or cream slice. It only has 2 layers of pastry and a single layer of pastry cream and sometimes fruits as well.

If you visit Italy, you might order a mille foglie and it’ll sport a sponge cake layer or possibly even savory versions with pesto, cheese, and spinach.

Canada calls it gateaux Napoleon or Napoleon slice, and uses almond paste and sometimes replaces the pastry with graham crackers.
Sweden and Finland have the most fun name with Napoleonbakelse. It sports whipped cream, custard, and jam then glazed with icing and currant jelly

Latin America even has a version called milhojas that layers with dulce de leche. Colombia takes this and adds melted guava paste called bocadillo and tops that with whipped cream and coconut flakes.

Hungry has Szegediner Torte which many people give credit for inventing the mille- feuille. In the Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson specifically calls it out. This Hungarian treat is made of caramelized layers of shortcrust pastry with a filling and could have influenced the sheets used in mille- feuille.

The most common history sites seem to accept is that the mille-feuille hails out of France due to a 1651 chef François Pierre de la Varenne publishing a recipe in Le Cuisinier François. One of the earliest French cookbooks, it also gives us early recipes for roux and béchamel sauce. Chef’s version doesn’t use vanilla but instead uses kirch and rum. You can also find it using marmalade instead of cream. During this time France was going through a culinary revolution to more natural flavors in their dishes, coming out of medieval times that used heavy spices to jazz up food. The recipe was then considered to be “perfected” by Chef Marie-Antoine Carême in the 18th century. Chef is considered a founder of French gastronomy and pioneer of grande cuisine. He made works that were elaborately decorated which had him serving kings and other aristocracy in his years. Interestingly though, Marie-Antoine called the recipe ancient which leads us into influences that come before Chef de la Varenne’s recipe.

The Roman Empire had a tradition of pastries that also featured alternating layers of pastry sheets and cream, and this is known to be especially true in Naples. The name Napoleon is thought to be derived from the more correct term napolitain which means from Naples, and has nothing to do with Napoleon Bonaparte. Italy also has a similar dessert called sfogliatelle that layers pastry and creamy fillings which also supports the idea of mille-feuille predating France. When looking for the history of Szegediner Torte, it took me back to Italy so I think we got caught in a loop here.

As we get into the 1900s we start seeing more and more variations that use fruit, chocolate, and more get added to the dish while the vanilla cream version is still known as the original and easily found in the streets of Paris.

Thank you for watching this episode of This Food in History! Please like and subscribe if you’d like to see more!