French desserts

French dessert is the country's great export, and the most codified of the world's dessert traditions. The structural elements — pâte brisée, pâte sucrée, pâte feuilletée, pâte à choux, the three basic creams (pâtissière, anglaise, mousseline) — are the building blocks for thousands of named pastries, each with codified proportions and methods established by Carême, Escoffier, and the great twentieth-century chefs of Paris.

The canon includes the choux-based éclair, religieuse and Paris-Brest; the laminated croissant, pain au chocolat and palmier; the moulded mousse, bavarois and entremet; the simple tart and clafoutis and crêpe; and the showpiece gateaux of Lyon and the Côte d'Or. Regional traditions also contribute strongly — Breton kouign-amann, Alsatian kugelhopf, Provençal calissons, Basque gâteau.

The defining flavours are butter, cream, egg yolk, chocolate, vanilla, almond, caramel, and seasonal stone fruit — applied with technical precision and a particular French love of texture contrast.