Tompouce

Tompouce
Alternative names Tompoes
Type Pastry
Place of origin Netherlands
Main ingredients Puff pastry, icing, pastry cream
Cookbook: Tompouce  Media: Tompouce

A tompoes or tompouce (lit. Tom Cat or Tom Thumb) is a common pastry in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is the local variety of the mille-feuille or Napoleon, introduced by an Amsterdam pastry baker and named after Admiraal Tom Pouce, the stage name of the Frisian dwarf Jan Hannema.

Customs

In the Netherlands, the tompoes is iconic, and the market allows little variation in form, size and colour. It must be rectangular, with two layers of puff pastry. The icing is smooth and pink, or occasionally white. For many years however, the top layer has been orange on Koningsdag (King's Day), and a few days before. It may also be orange-coloured when the national football team plays in large international tournaments; this dates from about 1990. The filling is invariably sweet, yellow pastry cream. Tompouce are sometimes topped with whipped cream. Variations with different fillings or with jelly are comparatively rare and are not called tompoes.

Several variations exist in Belgium. The boekske (lit. 'booklet') may have a sugar finish and may be square. Belgians also prefer the spelling tompouce.

Eating the tompouce

The cakes are usually served with tea or coffee, and in formal settings are eaten with pastry forks. But the brittleness of the pastry makes this difficult, inspiring the humorous article "Hoe eet je een tompoes?" 'How do you eat a tompoes?'.[1]

An easier, if slightly less dignified, way of eating a tompouce is to 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.

King's day tompoezen

Cultural references

The name of Tom Puss, a cartoon character by Marten Toonder, is a play on Tompouce = Tom poes (tomcat).

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tompouce.

References

  1. ↑ Freek Schravesande, nrc.next, August 30, 2007 (1e editie) (in Dutch)
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