galette

English

WOTD – 14 July 2017

Etymology

A galette des rois or king cake from France

A galette complète, a type of Breton galette (galette bretonne) with ham, a fried egg and cheese, served in Annecy, France

Borrowed from French galette.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, General American) IPA^(key): /ɡəˈlɛt/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: ga‧lette

Noun

galette (plural galettes)

1. A type of flat, round cake from France.
   • 1854, Alexis [Benoît] Soyer, A Shilling Cookery for the People: Embracing an Entirely New System of Plain Cookery and Domestic Economy, London, New York, N.Y.: George Routledge & Co., →OCLC, page 125:

     NATIONAL FRENCH CAKE OR GALETTE. Dearest Eloise,— There is one little and perhaps insignificant French cake, which I feel certain would soon become a favourite in the cottage, more particularly amongst its juvenile inhabitants. It is the famed galette, the melodramatic food of the gamins, galopins, mechanics, and semi-artists of France.

   • 2006, John Peterson, “Radishes and Young Turnips”, in Farmer John's Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables, Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith, →ISBN, page 135, column 1:

     Young Turnip Galette with Cardamom. A galette can be any manner of flat, round cake or tart. In this case, it is an exquisite arrangement of buttery-thin turnip slices, glazed and sealed together in an overlapping pattern like the surface of a fine apple tart.

   • 2007, Carole Bloom, “Stone Fruit”, in The Essential Baker: The Comprehensive Guide to Baking with Chocolate, Fruit, Nuts, Spices and Other Ingredients, Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 56:

     Apricot Galette. A galette is a rustic, free-form fruit tart, baked directly on a lined baking sheet rather than in a tart pan. Some galettes are made with puff pastry, others with yeast dough, and yet others with sweet tart or pastry dough.

   • 2002, Dorie Greenspan, “Grand Gâteaux for Fêtes and Feasts”, in Paris Sweets: Great Desserts From the City's Best Pastry Shops, New York, N.Y.: Broadway Books, →ISBN, page 164:

     Kings' Cake/Galette des Rois. […] Created to celebrate Epiphany, or Twelfth Night, the day the Three Kings visited the infant Jesus, the galette should probably appear only on Epiphany, January 6, but knowing something wonderful when they see (and taste) it, Parisians have made the galette des rois a month-long indulgence. The word galette can mean many things […], among them a crêpe; a small savory pancake (think potato pancake); a cookie, usually a butter cookie from Brittany; or a round thick but not particularly high cake, like the kings' cake. The galette des rois is two rounds of puff pastry filled with a mixture of almond cream and pastry cream.

2. Clipping of Breton galette: a crêpe or pancake made with buckwheat flour, and often with a savoury filling, originally from Upper Brittany in France.
   • 1974, Saturday Review, volume 1, page 31, column 3:

     We skipped dessert and walked down through the raindrops to a bake-shop to sample the flat Breton galette, made of sugar, eggs, butter, and flour […]

   • 2007, Anne Willan, “Potatoes, Pasta & Legumes—Good Things on the Side”, in The Country Cooking of France, San Francisco, Calif.: Chronicle Books, →ISBN, page 236:

     GALETTES BRETONNES AU SARRASIN. BRETON BUCKWHEAT GALETTES. The filling for a paper-thin Breton galette is always simple. The most popular, called a complet, includes ham and egg and often a spoonful of fresh cheese. You can ask for the egg to be brouillé, briskly scrambled on the hot galette, or miroir, left untouched to bake on top. When the galette is pleated, the golden egg yolk peeps out of the crisp brown folds.

   • 2014, Céline Pieters et al., Best of France: Sights, Hotels, Restaurants, Paris: Les Nouvelles Editions de l'Université, →ISBN, page 327:

     You want a breton galette (cancalaise made up of scallops, smoked bacon and mushrooms cream is a real delight ...), pancakes like the delicious "Bzh" with homemade salted butter, homemade crumble and toasted almonds – note that the specialities are made from organic breton flour.

Hypernyms

• cake
• crêpe

Translations

a type of flat, round cake

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 烙餅／烙饼 (zh) (làobǐng)

• French: galette (fr) f
• Galician: galleta (gl) f
• German: Galette f
• Hebrew: גאלט
• Ido: galeto (io)
• Japanese: ガレット (garetto)
• Korean: 갈레트 (galleteu)
• Norwegian: galette
• Russian: гале́та (ru) f (galéta), корж (ru) m (korž), лепёшка (ru) f (lepjóška)
• Spanish: torta (es) f
• Ukrainian: галети (halety)

Further reading

• galette on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

French

Etymology

Feminine form of galet (“pebble; disk-shaped object”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɡa.lɛt/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

galette f (plural galettes)

1. galette
2. (colloquial) dough, dosh, bread
3. (Louisiana) cookie
4. (Métis) bannock, frybread

Derived terms

• galette des rois

Descendants

• → Catalan: galeta
• → English: galette
• → Italian: galletta
• → Spanish: galleta (see there for further descendants)

Further reading

• “galette”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Norman

Alternative forms

• galaette (Guernsey)

Etymology

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.)

Pronunciation

• Audio (Jersey):

  (file)

Noun

galette f (plural galettes)

1. (Jersey) cookie, biscuit
2. (Jersey) thrashing

   Synonyms: achouêmie, astitcheuse, brûlée, dêgêlée, êcaûffeuse, rosseteuse

Derived terms

• galette à vrai