Tarte Tropézienne

Slice horizontally through a round bread scattered with coarse sugar, and a thick layer of cream appears. Bearing the name of Saint-Tropez in southern France, the tarte tropézienne is a pastry built on brioche, a yeasted dough containing eggs and butter. Although it is called a “tarte,” it is not a thin shell of shortcrust pastry. In a single slice, the textures of sugar grains that meet the teeth, fluffy bread and smooth cream come together.

A large tarte tropézienne bought in Cogolin. Location unknown, 2005, A666 (photo source / CC BY-SA 3.0)

A Grandmother’s Formula, the Bardot Naming Story, and the Original Shop’s Expansion

According to the history handed down by the original shop, Alexandre Micka, a craftsman from Poland, opened a shop in Saint-Tropez in 1955. What he sold was a pastry using two kinds of cream inherited from his grandmother. Brigitte Bardot, who had come to the town to film Roger Vadim’s “And God Created Woman,” is said to have liked it and given it its name. The shop dates both the filming and the naming to 1955, and the film was released the following year, 1956.

The shop expanded to Cogolin and Sainte-Maxime, and in 1985 Albert Dufrêne took it over. The pastry, with its grandmother’s formula and its story of a film shoot in Saint-Tropez, came to be sold in the surrounding towns as well.

According to the shop’s 2023 materials, the same cream is also used in mille-feuille and Paris-Brest, and new creations have appeared, such as the bite-sized Baby Trop and seasonal pastries combining strawberries or raspberries. Beyond being sandwiched in bread, the same cream has come to be used in a variety of pastries.

The Two Creams Described in the Patent and Modern Formulas

A patent filed in 1972 in Micka’s name describes a method of making custard and buttercream separately and then combining them. It is a preparation in which a cream cooked from milk and eggs is mixed with buttercream made separately.

Before this, according to a story told by the shop, a curious anonymous customer recommended securing rights to it in 1970, which led to the filing two years later. The detail that the customer was a senior official of the patent authority is treated as legend even by the shop. The customer’s identity cannot be confirmed, but the filing documents confirm that there was an effort to protect the method of making the cream as a right.

Meanwhile, the published recette (ingredient proportions and method) by the cook Chef Philippe is a crème diplomate combining custard with gelatin and whipped cream. It is scented with orange flower water; first a small amount of the whipped cream is mixed in to loosen the custard, and the rest is mixed in without crushing the bubbles. The center is filled to the same height as the cream piped around the edge, and the top half of the bread is placed over it. This is not the original shop’s secret formula itself but one of the published methods.

Shaping the Bread Through Fermentation and Chilling

For Philippe’s brioche, flour, eggs, sugar and yeast are kneaded, and then soft butter is added little by little. After one rise, the dough is folded, rolled thin and refrigerated until the next day, then cut into rounds and left to rise again. It is brushed with egg, topped with coarse sugar and sliced almonds, and baked. The soft bread is cooled to let its shape settle, then cut horizontally and filled with cream.

A small tropézienne served in Le Corbier. 2023, DimiTalen (photo source / CC0)

Versions Soaked with Syrup, and Egg-White Cream

Some methods soak the cut bread with syrup. The confectionery researcher Yuko Kumagai lightly moistens the cut surfaces with a sugar syrup scented with citrus and fills the bread with custard to which butter and fresh cream have been added. This preparation adds moisture to the bread while letting the citrus aroma soak all the way in. She has also published an adaptation that pairs a dough containing tea leaves with a syrup made from brewed tea.

On the other hand, Tomizawa Shoten’s “Basic Tropézienne” uses a cream in which egg whites and sugar are whisked over a water bath, cooled, and then combined with butter. Unlike the original shop’s patent, which combines custard and buttercream, or the formula that adds whipped cream, it is an example that does not use the step of cooking milk and egg yolks.

Comparison with a Similar Prague Pastry, and Adaptations in Japan

Prague has the pražský koláč, in which yeasted dough is cut horizontally and filled with vanilla pudding cream. On top it has a crumbly topping rather than coarse sugar. Czech food-culture research states that it came to be seen in Prague bakeries and pastry shops in the 1970s. It is a pastry similar in structure, but the cream and the topping differ, and no direct route of transmission is clear.

In Japan, the Échiré shop in Shibuya pairs butter brioche with a cream containing browned butter. The product that Yamazaki Baking launched in June 2022 was a sweet bun using custard whipped cream containing Hokkaido butter, along with pearl sugar. The combination of yeasted dough, cream and sugar grains has been adapted to each maker’s dairy ingredients and methods.

Glossary