50 Fun Facts About Pastry

The idiom 'eat humble pie' comes from medieval 'umble pie', which the lower classes made from what?

Deer innards, called umbles, went into umble pie for the lower classes while the lords ate the venison; the word descends from the Middle French nombles, 'deer's innards'.

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

Coffins, spelled coffyns, simply meant a basket or box: the hardened crust was a baking dish so sturdy it had to be cracked open, and it was not necessarily eaten.

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

Live birds were a 16th-century entremet, a between-courses amusement: the 1549 recipe explains how to make pies so that the birds stay alive inside and fly out when the crust is cut.

Which fictional Fleet Street barber's victims were baked into meat pies by his partner in crime, Mrs Lovett?

Sweeney Todd first appeared in the penny dreadful serial The String of Pearls in 1846, dropping customers through a revolving trap door; the stage version was billed as 'founded on fact'.

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 looted shop in Tacubaya?

Mexico agreed to pay 600,000 pesos in damages to French citizens after the French withdrew in March 1839, and the money was never paid.

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

Mooncake messages, the tale goes, helped coordinate the overthrow of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty; 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 1st Duke of Wellington is unproven: the name turns up on an 1899 Hamburg-America Line menu, and a 1923 Répertoire de la Cuisine recipe coats the fillet in poultry stuffing.

The paper-thin unleavened dough layered with butter for baklava and börek takes its name from the Greek for what?

Leaf is fýllo in Greek, and filo only reached English print in 1946; a practical filo machine invented in 1971 put the frozen sheets into American supermarkets.

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 in France the pastry called a Napoleon is something else entirely: two joined layers of puff pastry filled with frangipane.

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, adapting an indie film that cost $1.5 million and took about $22 million worldwide.

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, won EU protection in 2008?

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's Upper Peninsula adopted the Cornish pasty as a cultural symbol, with a 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, eaten also in Bosnia and Turkey, layers spinach, feta and egg in filo?

Spanakopita is eaten across Greece, Bosnia and Turkey, and once cheese goes into the filling Greeks can call it spanakotiropita instead.

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, descended from 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 was named World's Best Pastry Chef in 2016 by The World's 50 Best Restaurants, launched his own brand with Charles Znaty in 1998 and has written or co-written over 40 books.

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, supposedly to resemble the papal mitre?

Religieuse means 'nun', and the two cases are filled with chocolate or mocha crème pâtissière and topped with matching ganache; it was supposedly conceived in the mid-19th century.

Which savoury choux puff mixed with Gruyère or Comté is served cold in Burgundy's cellars during wine tastings?

Gougère is claimed by Tonnerre in the Yonne, and its medieval ancestor was closer to a stew of herbs, bacon, eggs, cheese and blood cooked in a sheep's stomach.

Which hollow puff pastry case is credited to Carême, though François Marin's 1739 Les Dons de Comus already lists it?

Vol-au-vent describes the pastry's lightness, and François Marin's Les Dons de Comus listed petits gâteaux vole au vent years before Carême was born; Americans once called it a 'patty case'.

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 typical of Rome, Naples and Lecce, and their modern form dates from the 18th century; in Sardinia the related zippole are a Carnival treat instead.

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

Pastilla's name comes from the Spanish for 'pill' or 'small pastry', the p becoming b in Arabic; 13th-century Andalusi cookbooks already paired pigeon with cinnamon in a strikingly similar stuffing.

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 a 'resurrection pie' followed a week later; ten pies have been baked across nine festivals.

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, and its tart is a 'Portuguese tart', poùh tāat, in Cantonese; the original 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 Pithiviers, and the filling is usually a sweet almond cream rather than the frangipane of a galette des rois; savoury versions with meat, vegetables or cheese also qualify.

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

Ensaïmada apparently has a Jewish origin, descending from bulemas and using lard instead of olive oil to dodge the suspicions of the Inquisition; written records in Mallorca date to the 17th century.

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 ball, dusted with white icing sugar, is the signature pastry of Rothenburg ob der Tauber?

Schneeball means 'snowball', after the round shape and sugar coat, and it is also called a Storchennest, stork's nest; the pastry has been known in Franconia and Hohenlohe for at least 400 years.

Which apple turnover gets a September festival in Saint-Calais, recalling a châtelaine's gift after a 1580 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 typed 'milk' in Brush Script Medium to make the original logo herself, and the shop opened on 15 November 2008 next door to Momofuku Ssäm Bar with a team of five working 16-hour days.

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 descends from English 'pea and pie suppers' and 19th-century pea soup served with eel.

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 opened its first permanent stand at Ottawa's ByWard Market two years after it began, and by 2018 it had 140 franchise and licence locations in six countries.