Mille Feuilles

French for ‘thousand leaves’ and a term for any of several items made from several layers of puff pastry. Since one sheet of puff pastry, conventionally made, comprises 729 laminations, and mille feuilles may have two to five layers (1,458 to 3,645 leaves), this is an accurate description. The invention of the form (but not of the pastry itself) is usually attributed to the Hungarian town of Szeged, and a caramel-coated mille feuilles is called Szegedinertorte. carême, writing at the end of the 18th century, cautiously stated only that it was of ancient origin.