Piles of Puff Paste cake - 1651, 1772

A ‘Gateau de Mille Feuilles’ recipe was described in La Varenne’s Le Cuisinier Francois, in 1651. It’s name, translated ‘Cake of a thousand leaves,’ described the many layers in each sheet of puff paste, and the number of layers with fillings (jelly, fruit, cream).

Another French chef Careme included five recipes, the oldest - ‘Cake de Mille Feuilles A La Ancienne’ in his The Royal Parisian Pastrycook and Confectioner, 1834.

Other names were ‘Lisbon Cake’ (Borella, 1772, 8-9 baked puff pastes the size of plate; fillings of apricot marmalade, currant jelly, gooseberry jelly, raspberry preserves, apple jelly toped with 3 colored icing/glaze), 'Raised Puff Cakes’ (Clermont, 1812, 4-5 uncooked or baked puff paste, fillings of cream or marmalade, covered with paste then baked quickly), and 'Cake of a hundred leaves’ (Beauvilliers, 1827, 5 layers filled with currant jelly, apricot marmalade, verjuice confection, cherries, and lastly cover with paste (pie crust) figures).

More recently the cakes are called ‘Napoleons’ and ‘Vanilla Slice.’

A Lisbon Cake 1772

"IN order to make this cake, get four or five pounds of fine flour, and make a good puff paste; that being done, roll it as thin as a half crown: piece. Then put over it a dish of the bigness of the cake you design to make, cut your paste round it, and put this piece of paste so cut round upon a sheet of paper. Cut out in the same manner seven or eight abbesses more, cutting one of them; into several figures, to be placed on the top of your cake. This being done, let them be baked separately, then glaze the abbess cut out into figures, and

[fillings] make your cake as follows: Put over one of these abbesses a laying of [1] apricot marmalade; then over this another abbess with a laying of [2] jelly of currants; again, another abbess over the last with [3] jelly of goosberries. Continue after the same manner to place the rest of your abbesses, putting between them your several layings of [4] preserved raspberries, [5] apple jelly, &c. placing on the [6] top your figured and glazed abbess, so that the rest may not be seen. To which purpose, your cake must be

glazed [icing] with a [1] white glaze, a [2] green glaze, and a [3] cochineal colour glaze, that it may appear no more than one abbess. Make the glaze thus, beat together in an earthen vessel with a wooden spoon about a pound of powder sugar, the white of two eggs, and the juice of half a lemon. If this mixture proves to be too thin put some more sugar in it; then divide this composition into three parts : in the first, put nothing, but leave it white as it is; in the second, put a little cochineal, to make it red; and the third green, with some juice of spinage.

Glaze your cake from top to bottom, first, with a streak of your white composition, then with a streak of the red and afterwards with a streak of the green following the same order till your cake is entirely glazed. Then to dry your icing, put your cake for a little while, in a warm oven, or before the fire turning it round now and then. Your cake being as it should be, you lay it in its dish, and serve it up. It may be made as small or as large as you please. Borella, Mr. The Court and Country Confectioner. London: 1772


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