Is there a French word for US shortcake?

[breeze]

I tried to explain strawberry shortcake to a French friend. Her responses: That's not a cake! Eww, you pour milk over it?! No French person would eat that!

In the US I might use the word biscuit, as in a soft biscuit dough baked in a round pan. No berries go into the cake. Each person gets a small bowl with a wedge of the shortcake, and I put a big bowl of strawberries or peach slices on the table. Each person adds fruit to their own bowl and then, yes, we pour milk over it. Sugar is optional.

The English use the word biscuit in a different way, for what we'd call a cookie in the US, and the English usage is probably what most French people would be familiar with.

I want to send the recipe to an adventurous cook and don't know how to translate the name, let alone describe the result.

[kerouac2]

The closest thing in French is "tarte sablée" in my opinion.

[breeze]

Tarte sablée is closer to what I'd call a shortbread than a shortcake.

I"m using shortcake to mean a soft, not very sweet dough leavened with baking powder. I use the recipe from Fanny Farmer, which has a little trick to produce two layers.

[bjd]

Google translate gives "shortcake", even though they show pictures! but word reference gives: gâteau sablé or fraisier for strawberry shortcake.

[bixaorellana]

Aug 6, 2020 15:27:43 GMT breeze said:

In the US I might use the word biscuit, as in a soft biscuit dough baked in a round pan. ... I"m using shortcake to mean a soft, not very sweet dough leavened with baking powder.

Breeze, even though I know what strawberry shortcake is, I also know there is more than one version, depending on the cake part. For instance, a common kind uses those little spongecake rounds sold in US supermarkets specifically for making strawberry shortcake. What you are describing for the cake part doesn't sound like a spongecake, nor does it sound exactly like what I think of as a US biscuit or UK crumpet.

Maybe instead of trying to find an accurate translation of strawberry shortcake, you could tell her you're sending a recipe for a "traditional American strawberry dessert", along with a photograph of your version.

I tried googling "plain french cake with baking powder" and what kept coming up was "French yogurt cake", which doesn't really sound like your "soft biscuit".

[htmb]

We usually fix strawberry shortcake for Easter or for a summer celebration here in Florida, but we top with whipped cream. I’ve never seen it served with milk, so that’s a new one for me.

[kerouac2]

And it does sound a bit disgusting.

Anyway, not everything will translate perfectly into another language. I think that is a good thing, because it means that the item is unique.

[breeze]

bixa, I used to think those spongey little circles were divine with strawberries, and htmb, that version does seem to call for whipped cream. I remember reading Gone with the wind as a teenager while eating lots of those. But once I discovered the old-fashioned shortcake recipe, I never looked back.

kerouac, you've lived in France a long time. Don't you have any memory in the US of buttermilk biscuits or baking powder biscuits? That's what I'm going for, though baked in a round cake pan.

I've decided to call it "un gâteau pas comme les autres." It takes me hours to get a short email into shape in French, so writing up this recipe may take a while. It's intended for a couple who own a restaurant. The chef likes to try new recipes. After they'd been to New York, he surprised me with a wedge of key lime pie he'd made. He does a version of brownies (broo NEE) pas comme les autres, but then none of the French versions of brownies are much like what I'm used to.

bixa, I'll use your suggestion for calling it a traditional fruit dessert and sending a photo. Though since some of you aren't familiar with this version, maybe "traditional" is stretching it.

I think pouring milk over a fruit dessert might be a Pennsylvania thing, maybe even Pa Dutch. My mother used to serve us kids a cobbler or crisp of peaches or apple or black raspberries on nights when our dad was out. She served it right out of the oven, so pouring cold milk over it cooled it down for immediate eating. It was our favorite meal of the week.

[kerouac2]

Aug 6, 2020 18:27:47 GMT breeze said:

kerouac, you've lived in France a long time. Don't you have any memory in the US of buttermilk biscuits or baking powder biscuits?

Ha ha, have you forgotten that my mother was French? Things like that were never given house room, even if both my biological father and my stepfather might have craved them.

Aug 6, 2020 18:27:47 GMT breeze said:

none of the French versions of brownies are much like what I'm used to.

Actually, the industrial supermarket brownies (Brossard brand) taste exactly like American brownies to me, even if they are broo NEES.

Aug 6, 2020 18:27:47 GMT breeze said:

She served it right out of the oven, so pouring cold milk over it cooled it down for immediate eating.

This almost evokes a vague memory from early childhood, because our house was surrounded by blackberries and my mother made lots of cobblers, which she must have learned from someone, maybe her mother-in-law, whom she pretty much despised by who might have been useful for a few details.

[breeze]

You wrong me, kerouac. I do remember your mother was French. I was thinking you had possibly come across biscuits at school meals or maybe at a friend's dinner table. I have read that biscuits in the southern US are often accompanied by gravy. I think that's the wrong way to go. Butter, jam or honey, now you're talking. But it's a regional preference.

I once served biscuits when my uncle and aunt and my parents visited, and my uncle was delighted, but then he told us how his mother in law from Kentucky made the lightest, highest, flakiest biscuits. Which mine weren't.

[kerouac2]

My mother taught me that those things were poisonous, so I never touched them in school or elsewhere.

[bixaorellana]

Aug 6, 2020 18:41:21 GMT kerouac2 said:

my mother made lots of cobblers

Ha! What tops a cobbler is essentially biscuit.

Aug 6, 2020 18:54:34 GMT breeze said:

I have read that biscuits in the southern US are often accompanied by gravy. I think that's the wrong way to go. Butter, jam or honey, now you're talking. But it's a regional preference.

The gravy thing got discussed the other day somewhere on here. Lugg had them that way in the US, but biscuits & gravy aren't a given across the US. I only learned of them in adulthood. You are so right that butter, jam, or honey is the way to go. My mother said that when she was a kid, the children from out in the country would come to school with a biscuit made into a sandwich with a slice of ham for lunch. She said she'd swap whatever her mother had given her for that biscuit and ham.

[breeze]

Oh, oh, country ham in a biscuit is delicious.

I used to love country ham, but one time at the butcher shop that made the best country ham I asked to use the restroom and was told to go through two curing rooms on my way to the restroom. I zipped through those rooms where the hams were hanging but even so, I got an overpowering chemical taste in my mouth which lasted for hours. That was it for me.

Not long afterwards this wonderful butcher's shop closed down when the owners got cancer.

I'd like to think there's a less chemical way to cure ham.

[kerouac2]

Aug 6, 2020 19:20:56 GMT bixaorellana said:

Ha! What tops a cobbler is essentially biscuit.

My mother's cobblers had criss crossed strips of the same dough that was used as the shell.

[bixaorellana]

Aug 6, 2020 19:36:34 GMT breeze said:

I'd like to think there's a less chemical way to cure ham.

That is a cautionary tale, Breeze!
Ham must have started out as a way to preserve meat. I think they did things like smoke it very, very slowly, maybe after salting it, then it was hung in a cool dry place to finish curing. And maybe the smoking wasn't so much to get a smoke flavor as it was to keep the air dry and ward off bugs. Modern shortcuts allowed for more ham to be made in a shorter time, with a side serving of deadly disease. I remember my grandfather used to sell something in his general store called liquid smoke, which may still be available. Even as a kid I thought, "Is this really a good idea?"
As an adult, I once lived next door to some graduate pharmaceutical students. Every time we'd be cooking outside over wood or charcoal they would announce, "You're eating cancer."

Aug 6, 2020 19:42:18 GMT kerouac2 said:

My mother's cobblers had criss crossed strips of the same dough that was used as the shell.

That sounds like a pie, not a cobbler.