Dutch Mille-Feuille

This pastry is known all over the world under different names, but when it is orange you know for sure it is Dutch.
by Ena Scheerstra

Last year I already explained the orange fever the Netherlands go in with Queen’s day. This includes the habit of turning foods orange as well. These mille-feuilles normally have a pink glaze on top, but with Queen’s day they are only available in orange. This year the orange fever in the Netherlands is even bigger than normal, because of a very special event. On 28 January 2013, our Queen Beatrix announced that she will abdicate on 30 April 2013 (Queen’s day), in favour of her eldest son Willem-Alexander, the heir apparent to the throne. For this big day, Queen’s day is called crowning day and from next year onwards it will become King’s day.

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The Dutch mille-feuille consists of 2 layers rectangular puff pastry, filled with sweet, yellow vanilla-pastry cream and a thin layer of pink icing (orange with Queen’s day or when the Dutch national football team plays) on the top layer of puff pastry. Sometimes the whole is topped with a stripe of whipped cream, but this is not very common. They are usually served with tea or coffee.

The mille-feuille, also known as napoleon or custard slice, is called tompoes (literally tomcat) in the Netherlands. The story goes that it was inspired on the show of midget General Tom Thumb who traveled with an American circus through the whole of Europe. In one of his acts he impersonated Napoleon. Later on there was a Dutch midget doing shows under the name Admiral Tom Pouce. Both Tom Thumb and Tom Pouce refer to a fairy tale by the brothers Grimm. But how this caused the tompoes to be called tompoes is not clear.

Eating a mille-feuille can be quite complicated. Usually they are served on a small plate with a small fork, but the brittle pastry makes it impossible to take off a piece in a dignified way, especially because the plate and the fork are so very small that you cannot maneuver at all. When you try to take a bit off anyway in this way, the pastry cream splatters out at the opposite side, all over the edge of the plate, so you have to react fast to not let it ooze onto the ground. And because of the force you need to get through the pastry, you will launch the bit of pastry (now without any cream because of the oozing problem) you eventually got of with your too small fork from your too small plate on the floor, or worse, onto someone else. There are a few ways to prevent this disastrous mess. The first one is using a large plate, a large fork and preferably a knife too. In this way you have room to maneuver, the fork is big enough to get through the whole pastry and you can use the knife to stabilize the whole thing, preventing it from falling onto the floor. Another way is to only buy mini-mille-feuilles, these are one mouthful so chopping bits of is not necessary. But sometimes you are faced with the small plate and fork with a big mille-feuille…. then there is only one solution. Take the frosted top layer off the pastry and hold it one hand, with the bottom half in the other and then take sequential bites, one from the top and then one from the bottom. Or eat the top first and then the bottom (this is convenient when you have to hold the plate too). Not very dignified, but at least the mille-feuille will not be all over the place.