The Dessert Dictionary Project

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éclair  France

An individual-sized dessert made with cream puff pastry (pâte à choux), most commonly filled with pastry cream and topped with one of several types of glaze (chocolate and caramel are the most typical).  Éclairs are usually the shape and size of a very small hot-dog bun.  More recently, some pastry chefs have begun to experiment with less common flavors, such as Elizabeth Falkner’s cassis-violet and raspberry-rose flavored éclairs pictured below.




Election Cake United States (18th-19th centuries)

In the early years of the United States, these huge cakes were baked for special occasions such as elections.  The usual recipe resembled what we now call a fruitcake.  For the earliest printed recipe in an American cookbook (these sorts of “great cakes” were common enough in England), see Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery (1796), p. 43.


entremets France


The term, entremets, roughly follows the development of the French menu.  Pre-Revolutionary menus took the form of several courses where numerous dishes were served buffet-style–the so-called “service à la française.” The sequential service common today, referred to as “service à la russe,” was introduced in the 19th century.  Under the old way of serving, entremets were literally what was placed “entre les mets,” that is between the main dishes.  The entremets were often pastries both sweet and savory, but they could also include vegetables.  (In the late 1600s “hors d’oeuvres” meant roughly the same thing.)  By the late nineteenth century the term entremets became more restrictive and started to refer to an exclusively sweet course to be served after the cheese course.  The 1961 Larousse Gastronomique uses entremets as a synonym for dessert.   More recently (since the 1990s?) entremet (without the “s”) has come to mean a cake made up of layers of sponge cake and mousse.  This use is especially common in the United States but French pastry chefs also use it.


fairy cake UK


coming soon


far breton France


A dense, crusty custard or baked pancake typical of Brittany.  It is similar to clafouti though here dried prunes take the place of fresh cherries.


fastnachts United States

Plain yeast-based doughnuts associated with the Pennsylvania Dutch (Germans).  They are traditional to Shrove Tuesday (Fastnacht in German). Many recipes include mashed potatoes and occasionally replace the yeast with baking powder.  See also doughnuts.


figgy duff Newfoundland (Canada), UK


In Newfoundland, a figgy duff is a boiled pudding made with raisins, sweet spices and molasses.  The terms comes from the UK where it was dialect for fig pudding though (at least in Cornwall) there also used to be a baked cake of the same name.


filo (also phyllo) Greece, yufka Turkey

Paper-thin sheets of wheat-based dough. Unlike strudel dough, the pastry is not stretched but rather made by rolling the dough very thin, traditionally several layers at a time, with starch to keep them separated.  These sheets are then typically brushed with fat and layered once more before baking.


fios de ovos Portugal


This quintessentially Portuguese confection is  made by drizzling a batter of egg yolks into boiling syrup.  The result looks like a tangle of yellow vermicelli and has a chewy, almost rubbery texture.  These are most often used as an ingredient in other desserts.



Photo: Antonio Rosado from Doçaria Popular Portuguesa, 2004



fritelle veneziane Italy

Egg-sized yeast-based doughnuts made from a yeast dough scattered with candied fruit and spiked with a shot of grappa or anisette.