48 Fun Facts About Pastry

The idiom 'eat humble pie' comes from 'umble pie', a low-status dish made from what?

Deer innards, called umbles, filled umble pie, considered low-class food; with the h of 'humble' then silent, the two similar-sounding words merged into a pun.

What did medieval cooks call a pie's thick, sturdy pastry case, using a word that then simply meant a box or basket?

Coffins were pastry before they were burial boxes: the pie-crust sense dates from the late 14th century, the funeral one only from the 1520s, and the hard crust doubled as the baking dish.

A 1549 Italian cookbook gave a recipe for pies containing what, a between-courses amusement for 16th-century diners?

Live birds flew out when the crust was cut, a banquet stunt of the kind remembered in the 'four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie' of Sing a Song of Sixpence.

Which penny-dreadful villain's victims were baked into meat pies by his partner in crime, Mrs Lovett?

Sweeney Todd first appeared in The String of Pearls, serialised in 1846–47, where a lever on his barber's chair tips customers backward through a trap door.

Which jam-filled German pastry powers the urban legend that JFK called himself a doughnut in a 1963 speech?

Berliner is the jelly doughnut's name across much of Germany, but the idea that 'Ich bin ein Berliner' meant 'I am a doughnut' only emerged two decades after the speech and is false.

Which country fought France in the 1838 'Pastry War', sparked by a pastry cook's damage claim in Tacubaya?

Mexico agreed to pay 600,000 pesos and the French fleet withdrew in March 1839; the fighting cost Santa Anna a leg and revived his standing at home.

Cornish tin miners supposedly ate a pasty by its crimped edge, then discarded that crust to avoid traces of what?

Arsenic is the poison in this popular theory about the side crimp, though old photographs show pasties wrapped in paper bags and eaten from end to end, 'the true Cornish way'.

Which Chinese pastry carries a folk tale of rebel messages smuggled inside it to topple the Yuan dynasty?

Mooncake messages, the tale goes, spread under cover of a rumour that only special mooncakes could ward off a plague; the pastry is the centrepiece of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Which dish wraps fillet steak and mushroom duxelles in puff pastry?

Beef Wellington's link to the Duke of Wellington is more legend than fact: the name is not recorded until around 1900, half a century after his death, and its likely model is France's filet de boeuf en croûte.

Which French puff pastry dessert is sold as a 'custard slice' in Britain and a 'Napoleon' across North America?

Mille-feuille means 'thousand-sheets', and the name is not far off: six folds of three layers give classic puff pastry 729 layers, and some modern recipes reach 2,048.

Which British pudding fills shortcrust with golden syrup and breadcrumbs, its earliest known recipe by Mary Jewry?

Treacle tart uses golden syrup, also known as light treacle, and is served warm with clotted cream, custard or ice cream; mentions of it predate Jewry's late-19th-century cookbooks.

Which Sara Bareilles musical, based on a 2007 Adrienne Shelly film, follows diner pie baker Jenna Hunterson?

Waitress opened on Broadway in April 2016 with Jessie Mueller as Jenna; Sara Bareilles later took the role herself, starring in the 2021 return that was filmed for cinemas.

Which 1990 David Lynch series wove cherry pie, coffee and owls around the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer?

Twin Peaks opens with logger Pete Martell finding the body wrapped in plastic on a riverbank; Lynch and Mark Frost stacked the show with motifs from fir trees to doughnuts.

Which Leicestershire town's pork pie, hand-formed around uncured meat that cooks grey, holds protected geographical status?

Melton Mowbray pies may only carry the name if made to the traditional recipe within a designated zone around the town, and that recipe's uncured pork is what leaves the filling grey when cooked.

Which US state made the Cornish pasty a cultural symbol of its far north, with an annual pasty festival in Calumet?

Michigan's Upper Peninsula made pasty shops a tourist attraction, and Cornish lead miners also carried the pasty to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, during the 1830s mineral rush.

Which Greek savoury pie layers spinach, feta and egg between sheets of filo?

Spanakopita with cheese can also be called spanakotiropita, and a version made without cheese or eggs is eaten during fasting periods in Greece.

Which crust, steamed for hours around the raw meat in a pudding basin, encloses a traditional steak and kidney pudding?

Suet pastry wraps the raw meat in a pudding basin that steams for hours; Mrs Beeton printed the first recipe to add kidney to the steak in 1859, sent in by a reader in Sussex.

Which folded turnover has seafood fillings in Robert de Nola's Llibre del Coch, a Catalan cookbook of 1520?

Empanada means 'breaded' in Spanish, and Robert de Nola's Catalan cookbook lists them among its Catalan, Italian, French and Arabian recipes; in Ghana and Nigeria they are simply 'meatpies'.

Which filled Polish doughnuts are eaten on Tłusty Czwartek, the 'Fat Thursday' before Lent, to use up the lard?

Pączki Day is also celebrated by the Polish communities of Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee, and the tradition began as a way to empty the house of lard, sugar, eggs and fruit before Lent.

Which puff pastry biscuit, also sold as 'pig's ears' and 'elephant ears', is folded into a heart or butterfly shape?

Palmier is short for feuille de palmier, and the biscuit was only invented at the start of the 20th century; Italians call them Prussiane, mocking the supposedly large ears of Prussian invaders.

Which Caribbean turnover, influenced by the Cornish pasty, gets its golden shell from egg yolk, annatto or turmeric?

Jamaican patty fillings are savoury ground meat, and the Creole dish blends the pasty brought by British colonists and Cornish sailors with the turnovers of the Spanish Caribbean.

Which pastry's elastic, sugar-free dough is stretched by hand until, purists say, a newspaper can be read through it?

Strudel dough, Strudelteig, is high-gluten flour, water, oil and salt, worked hard and then drawn thin over the backs of the hands with a linen tea towel; apple and Topfen quark are the classic fillings.

In which TV series does Ned, a pie-maker who revives the dead with one touch, run a restaurant called The Pie Hole?

Pushing Daisies ran on ABC from 2007 to 2009 with Lee Pace as Ned, whose gift has a catch: anything kept alive for more than a minute costs another life nearby.

Which shortcut to classic laminated dough mixes the butter into the base itself rather than folding in a solid block?

Rough puff, also sold as blitz or flaky pastry, exists because the classic method is laborious; France's oldest documented flaky pastry recipe sits in a 1311 charter from Robert, bishop of Amiens.

Which stiff pastry, moulded while still warm, is hand-raised around pork pies and game pies?

Hot water crust sags a little as the filled pie bakes, which is accepted as the mark of a hand-made pie; the moulded paste holds its shape as it cools and copes with very wet fillings.

Which French pâtissier, apprenticed to Gaston Lenôtre at 14, was dubbed 'the Picasso of Pastry' by Vogue?

Pierre Hermé launched his own brand with Charles Znaty in 1998 and opened its first boutique in Tokyo, not Paris, which had to wait until 2001; he was named World's Best Pastry Chef in 2016.

Which Paris tea house, opened in 1903 by confectioner Antoine Rumpelmayer, counted Proust and Coco Chanel as regulars?

Angelina was run from 1916 by the founder's widowed daughter-in-law of the same name, and is famed for an almost pudding-thick hot chocolate, the chocolat l'Africain, and its Mont Blanc.

Which city's pistachio baklava became, in 2013, the first Turkish product to win EU protected geographical status?

Gaziantep only got baklava in 1871, when Çelebi Güllü brought back a recipe learned from a Syrian chef in Damascus; it is served with kaymak cream.

Which French choux pastry stacks a small cream-filled case on a larger one, joined with piped buttercream?

Religieuse means 'nun', and it has a film-star offshoot: the pastel courtesan au chocolat was invented for Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Which hollow puff pastry case is credited to Carême, though its name was in print decades before his birth?

Vol-au-vent is literally 'flight in the wind', a nod to its lightness; a starter in France, it is a main course in Belgium, filled with creamy chicken and mushrooms and often served with fries.

Which ridged Neapolitan pastry descends from a 17th-century creation at the Santa Rosa monastery in Conca dei Marini?

Sfogliatella comes in two forms, the layered riccia ('curly') and the shortcrust frolla; Naples pastry chef Pasquale Pintauro acquired the convent's original recipe and began selling it in the city.

Which Italian fried dough balls, dusted with powdered sugar and often custard-filled, celebrate Saint Joseph's Day?

Zeppole are sold on the streets for the feast every 19 March and go by bignè di San Giuseppe in Rome; Sardinia's related zippole are a Carnival treat, piped into the oil through a funnel.

Which Moroccan pie layers spiced squab in crêpe-thin warqa with a crunchy mix of almonds, cinnamon and sugar?

Pastilla's filling is older than it looks: a 13th-century Andalusi cookbook already cooked pigeon with cinnamon, almonds, saffron and eggs, then finished the dish in the oven.

In Bosnia and Herzegovina the name burek is reserved for the spiral-rolled filo pastry filled with what?

Minced meat alone earns the name burek in Bosnia; the cheese spiral is sirnica, spinach-and-cheese is zeljanica and potato is krompiruša, and Lonely Planet named it world-class street food in 2012.

Which West Yorkshire village has baked giant pies since 1788, starting with one for George III's recovery from madness?

Denby Dale's 1887 pie for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee spoiled and was buried in quicklime, so the village baked a replacement 'resurrection pie' the following month.

Where did British pharmacist Andrew Stow open Lord Stow's Bakery in 1989, with egg tarts copying the pastel de nata?

Macau's Coloane village got the bakery, where Stow and his wife Margaret Wong sold 'Portuguese tarts'; the Guangzhou egg tart was itself inspired by English custard tarts in the early 20th century.

Which pastry chef, hired by Le Meurice in 2011, sculpts desserts to look exactly like the fruit they are made from?

Cédric Grolet moulds a thin white-chocolate shell and airbrushes it to match the fruit inside; he joined Le Meurice in 2011 after six years at Fauchon and became its executive pastry chef in 2013.

Which Paris pâtisserie, the city's oldest, was founded in 1730 by a former pastry chef to Poland's King Stanisław?

Stohrer's founder Nicolas Stohrer came to France in 1725 with Stanisław's daughter Marie, the bride of Louis XV, and the shop in the 2nd arrondissement was bought by the Dolfi family in 2017.

Which domed puff pastry pie, scored with spirals and usually filled with almond cream, is named for a French town?

Pithivier takes its name from the town of Pithiviers; unlike the galette des rois, baked for Epiphany, it is made all year, and savoury versions with meat, vegetables or cheese also count.

Which coiled Mallorcan pastry, popular too in the Philippines, is named for the Catalan word for its pork lard?

Ensaïmada is literally 'enlarded', after the saïm in its dough, yet the Philippine ensaymada is typically a brioche baked with butter instead and topped with sugar and grated cheese.

Which Finnish open pie, a thin rye crust around a filling of rice, has had EU traditional speciality status since 2003?

Karelian pasty producers who stray from the recipe must call theirs riisipiirakka or perunapiirakka instead, and the hot pies are spread with egg butter, munavoi, before eating.

Which deep-fried shortcrust pastry, dusted with icing sugar, is the signature treat of Rothenburg ob der Tauber?

Schneeball means 'snowball', after its round shape and sugar coat; once a festive treat kept for special occasions such as weddings, it is now sold all year in Rothenburg's bakeries and cafés.

Which apple turnover gets a September festival in Saint-Calais, recalling a châtelaine's gift after a plague?

Chausson aux pommes lore says the châtelaine offered a kind of apple pie to the plague's survivors; a Confrérie formed in 1992 to keep the tradition, now a gastronomic meet-up on the first Sunday of September.

Which filo pastry of Serres and Thessaloniki has a name rooted, like focaccia, in the Roman panis focacius?

Bougatsa was a staple of the Cappadocian Greeks in the Byzantine Empire, and its fillings run from semolina custard to cheese or meat between the layers of phyllo.

Which pastry chef founded New York's Milk Bar in 2008, creating Cereal Milk and the pie first sold as Crack Pie?

Christina Tosi was Momofuku's pastry chef when Ssäm Bar took over a vacant laundromat next door; she pitched a bakery, David Chang put up the seed money, and she made the logo herself in Brush Script.

Which Australian city's 'pie floater', thought to date from the 1890s, drops a meat pie into a bowl of thick pea soup?

Adelaide's pie floater usually comes with tomato sauce on top, and it may descend from English 'pea and pie suppers' and pea soup with eel; dumplings in soup were once called 'floaters'.

Which Bulgarian filo-and-cheese pastry is baked with coins or paper fortunes inside for New Year's Eve?

Banitsa charms, kasmeti, can also be dogwood twigs with a bud for health, and Bulgarians traditionally serve the pie on both Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Which Canadian fried-dough pastry chain, born in Killaloe, Ontario in 1978, sold one to Barack Obama in Ottawa in 2009?

BeaverTails marked the visit with an 'Obama Tail', a cinnamon-sugar pastry finished with a Nutella O; its pastries are hand-stretched to the shape of a beaver's tail.