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Mille Feuilles
Roll out on a lightly floured table half pound feuilletage, as thin as possible; then with a round pastry cutter three inches in diameter cut out eighteen pieces. Lay them on a lightly buttered pastry pan. Make a few small incisions with a fork on top of each, lightly wet with the white of an egg by means of a hair pastry brush; then spread half teaspoon powdered sugar over each; let rest for half hour. Set the pan in a hot oven to bake for ten minutes. Remove and let cool off. Spread half teaspoon apricot jelly over six pieces; spread half teaspoon Frangipani cream over six more pieces; then half teaspoon raspberry jam over the remaining six pieces. Take three pieces, one of each kind, and arrange evenly, one on top of another; decorate with a little whipped cream and proceed the same with the rest. Arrange the six mille feuilles on a dish with a folded napkin. Sprinkle a little powdered sugar over and serve.
A pastry-shop assembly rather than a baking project: the work is in the puff pastry, and the rest is spreading and stacking. Nothing here is difficult, but the discs must be crisp and cool before anything wet touches them.
- FeuilletageThis is puff pastry, made by the classic folded-butter method. Half a pound is about 225 g, which is one sheet of good all-butter commercial puff; that quantity gives eighteen three-inch rounds only if you roll it genuinely thin, around 2-3 mm.
- "A hot oven"Read this as 425-450F (220-230C). Puff needs the high initial heat to turn its water to steam and lift the layers; a moderate oven melts the butter out and gives a flat, greasy biscuit. Ten minutes is right at that temperature for thin rounds, but watch them from eight.
- The half-hour restCut puff shrinks and pulls out of round if baked straight away; a rest lets the gluten relax and the butter firm so the rounds stay round and rise evenly. The book does not say where to rest them; a refrigerator will do this better than a warm kitchen.
- Egg white and sugarThe white-and-sugar wash sets to a thin crackling glaze rather than the deep colour an egg yolk wash gives. Brush lightly; pooled white will glue the layers shut at the edge and stop the rise. The fork pricks are deliberate and keep the discs from doming into pillows.
- Frangipani creamCrème frangipane: pastry cream enriched with ground almonds, or a blend of pastry cream and almond cream in proportions that vary from kitchen to kitchen. Modern almond frangipane sold for tarts is meant to be baked and is too raw and stiff here; you want a spoonable, already-cooked cream.
- Apricot jellyApricot jam boiled briefly and passed through a sieve; sieved apricot was the standard pastry glaze of the period, though here it is spread as a filling rather than brushed on. Any smooth apricot preserve stands in.
- Yield and assemblyEighteen discs make six three-layer pastries, one dessert portion each. Fill and stack no more than an hour before serving; the discs go soft quickly once jam and cream sit on them.
- The folded napkinA linen napkin folded on the serving dish was standard restaurant practice for dry pastries and fried items, both for looks and to stop them sliding. Purely presentational, and safe to skip.
Mille-feuille means "a thousand leaves," a name for the countless thin layers that puff pastry produces when rolled and folded; the pastry itself is generally traced to seventeenth-century France, though laminated doughs are older and more widely spread than any single origin story allows. What is notable in this version is the shape: the familiar mille-feuille of the modern patisserie window is a long rectangular slab cut into slices, whereas here the form is round, individually cut and stacked - a shape one might guess suited hotel and restaurant kitchens, where a plated portion for one was more useful than a communal strip. The three different fillings - apricot, frangipane, raspberry - look, though this is speculation, like a tidy solution to a professional problem, since a single batch of trimmings and a few standing preparations already on the bench could be turned into a composed dessert without making anything new. Books like this one, written for cooks working through a large repertoire at speed, assume the reader already knows how to make feuilletage and frangipane and so spend their words on the assembly instead.