Five French Pastries Named After Things They (Maybe, Allegedly, Sorta) Resemble
Featuring “the well of love”
Ah, French pastry. Mouthwatering? Absolutely. Sophisticated? Mais oui! But what do those melodious names mean? Let’s take a look.
Religieuse
The religieuse is the answer to a question no one was asking: What if éclairs, but hard to eat? One small, round, crème pâtissière-filled choux pastry is stacked on top of another twice its size; the two pastries are topped with ganache and joined together with buttercream frosting. The result is a delectable but cumbersome billowy shape that might — if you don’t look too closely — bear some resemblance to the outline of a nun’s habit. And “nun” is exactly what “religieuse” means.
Financier
Speaking of nuns, here’s a thinker: How did an almond-flavored cake, originally developed by the Sisters of the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary and traditionally made in an oval-shaped mold, wind up as a shallow, rectangular bar with a name that evokes money? The most common theory is that these tiny cakes were all the rage in the late nineteenth century at the Pâtisserie Lasne in the financial district of Paris, where the owner altered their shape to evoke gold bars to make his “financiers” all the more appealing to . . . well, financiers.
Palmier
Turning to the natural world for inspiration, this puff pastry goes by many names around the world: pig’s ears, elephant ears, little hearts, butterfly pastries . . . But they are perhaps best known by their French name, which means “palm tree.” Because their shape looks like palm leaves. You see it, right? Sure, yeah, palm leaves.
Puits d’amour
Dating back to the 1730s, this pastry is attributed to French chef Vincent La Chapelle, then in the employ of Madame de Pompadour. Traditionally filled with either raspberry jam or crème pâtissière, it was given a scandalous name with erotic connotations: “the well of love.” Wink, wink. You know, the well? Of love? Apparently, Louis XV’s entourage thought this pastry bore an uncanny resemblance to female genitalia. To be honest, folks, I’ve got more questions than answers on this one.
Croissant
Finally, something we can all agree on, right? Croissants are, as the name suggests, crescent-shaped . . . ideally . . . much of the time. Sometimes they come out of the oven looking more like the Michelin Man than a crescent moon, but let’s not quibble about that. What we can (and will!) quibble about is the habit, among English speakers, of calling these two items by the same name:
One of these things is a croissant. The other is a pain au chocolat. (Or a chocolatine — but let’s leave that debate for another time.) They’re both flaky, buttery viennoiseries, but they are not both croissants! A chocolatine/pain au chocolat (literally, “chocolate bread”) is its own delicious thing, with names that in no way indicate or prescribe its proper shape.
And given the examples above, that just might be for the best, n’est-ce pas?
