Gâteau Nantais

A thin white glaze covers a low, round cake. Gâteau nantais, which bears the name of Nantes, is a cake with a soft yellow crumb fragrant with almond and rum. Rum is mixed into the batter, soaked into the cake once it is baked, and also added to the glaze on the surface.

Old cookbooks also included cakes under the same name that used neither rum nor glaze.

The three places rum goes

In a representative modern method, salted butter and sugar are mixed until soft, then combined with almond flour, eggs and a small amount of wheat flour. Keeping the wheat flour to a small amount creates a formula that brings out the flavor of the eggs and nuts. The fine almond flour is not there as pieces to bite into; it blends throughout the batter and creates the texture.

After being mixed into the batter, rum is also soaked into the cake fresh from the oven and used in the glaze applied once it has cooled. This method separates the aroma that is exposed to the oven’s heat from the aroma added after baking. The thin white film of powdered sugar and rum touches the mouth first, and beneath it the soft cake gives way.

Formulas also vary from shop to shop. Some shops use white rum and others use dark rum, and they also differ in whether apricot jam is layered beneath the glaze. A fruit layer adds acidity and shine, and the strength of the aroma and the flavor also change depending on the type of rum used and the amount added. The white surface may be shared, but there is no single formula beneath it.

Gâteau nantais served at the café inside the art museum in Nantes. The white glaze and the cut surface of the cake are visible. Photo: Benoît Prieur, 2024-02-22, Nantes, France. Original image / CC0. Downscaled version from the distributing source; no additional processing.

Port trade and two origin legends

Two legends about the origin of gâteau nantais are told in Nantes. One is that the artisan Jean Rouleau made it around 1820 on rue Saint-Clément. The other is that it arose from sailors soaking the dry biscuits they carried on voyages in rum.

A soft cake made by an artisan and a dry sweet moistened on board ship follow different storylines. Both are legends that tell of how this cake began.

Behind the sugar and rum that entered the port lies a history of colonial production and exploitation, and of the transatlantic slave trade. The City of Nantes’s heritage materials also state that it is not known who began making the present-day cake—a soft almond cake soaked with rum and covered with a white glaze—or when.

Formulas for cakes of the same name in old cookbooks

The name gâteau nantais appears in cookbooks from 1866, 1886 and 1929. The one recorded by Pierre Quentin in 1886 was a “dry” cake, and there were also others close to quatre-quarts and ones that used neither rum nor glaze.

Even though the same name continued, it is not certain that the formula was the same as that of today’s soft, rum-soaked cake.

From LU production to a revival by local artisans

The history of its sale has physical clues that survive. Lefèvre-Utile, known as LU, produced gâteau nantais on a semi-industrial scale from 1882 to 1972. A box printed with “Gâteau Nantais – Lefèvre Utile” survives at the Nantes History Museum.

Early 20th-century advertisements promoted it for year-end and New Year celebrations and for Epiphany, and postwar advertisements emphasized quality unchanged from before the war. LU’s production and advertising spread this soft, rum-laced cake beyond the port city.

When LU’s production ended in the 1970s, this cake, which required a dedicated production line, disappeared from the factory’s regular range. Local artisans who began making it again from the 1980s each chose their own type of rum and whether to include apricot jam. Today’s low cake became established under a long-standing name, through factory production and sale and through the formulas of local artisans.

Glossary