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Napoleon Cake
Roll out two sheets of puff paste quite thin and bake on baking sheets. When done spread pastry cream upon one sheet, place the other on top of it, and finish the top with the pearl glaze. Cut in diamonds or squares, Another pastry cake of the same sort will be found at No. 244.
A three-line recipe that assumes you already know how to handle puff paste and pastry cream. The points below fill in what a nineteenth-century pastry cook took for granted.
- The hinge: bake the sheets flat and dryRoll the puff paste to about 1/8 inch, dock it all over with a fork or roller, and weight it with a second baking sheet for most of the bake so it rises evenly rather than doming. It must come out crisp and dry through the middle; any softness left in the layers turns to paste once the cream goes on.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none. Modern practice for puff paste of this kind is around 400-425F, starting hot to set the lift, then dropping to 375F to finish colouring and drying, 20-30 minutes in all depending on thickness.
- Pastry creamThis is crème pâtissière, cooked with egg and flour or cornstarch until it boils and thickens, then chilled completely. Warm or loose cream will slide out under the top sheet. It should hold a clean shape on the spoon.
- Pearl glazeThe book does not define the term. It is most likely a thin white glaze -- fondant, or a royal icing of egg white and confectioner's sugar -- spread smooth over the top sheet. If you want the familiar marbling, pipe fine lines of melted chocolate across the wet glaze and draw a skewer through them at right angles.
- Glaze the sheet before assemblyThe recipe glazes after the top sheet is laid on. Many bakers instead ice the top sheet while it is off the cake and let the glaze set before laying it in place, to avoid pressing on the layers and dragging the cream out at the sides.
- CuttingUse a long serrated knife and press down through the glaze in one stroke rather than sawing. Trim the ragged edges square first, then cut diamonds or squares.
- TimingAssemble within a couple of hours of serving. Left overnight the pastry softens completely, which is pleasant to some tastes but no longer a Napoleon.
- The cross-reference"No. 244" points to another numbered recipe in the same book and is of no use unless you have the full text at hand.
The Napoleon is the American bakeshop name for what French pastry calls mille-feuille, a thousand leaves: puff paste baked flat, layered with pastry cream, and glazed on top. The link to Bonaparte is decorative rather than documented; the name is often traced instead to napolitain, a term used in French pastry for layered constructions in the Neapolitan style, and the association with the emperor seems to have attached itself later in English-speaking countries. Its appearance here, stated in three sentences with a cross-reference to a near-identical cake, tells you how routine it had become in American commercial pastry. The treatment assumes a reader who can already turn out puff paste and a pot of pastry cream, and needs only to be told how they go together and what goes on top.