The Gâteau Explained: How Is It Different From A Cake?

Did you take French in high school? If so, you probably learned that "gâteau" (or "gâteaux" in plural) means "cake." But here's a tasty bit of food history — while the French use "gâteau" for any sort of cake, in English, this elegant word is saved for something extra special.

In the translated version of the famous Larousse Gastronomique, the bible of French cooking first published in 1938, a cake and a gâteau are classified differently. Essentially, while you can find cakes in endless varieties, a true gâteau is something more refined — lighter in texture and made using fresher ingredients than your typical cakes, like just-picked fruits and fresh cream. You could say that while every gâteau is technically a cake, not every cake can be called a gâteau!

Interestingly, the book also mentioned that gâteaux weren't always so sophisticated and indulgent. The first gâteaux were nothing more than baked blocks of flour and water and eaten more like basic bread than dessert — even the word "gâteau" itself is a derivative of "wastel", an old French word that just meant "food." Over time, bakers started enriching them with ingredients like cream and eggs, and eventually, gâteaux turned into the grand treats that we know and love today.

When you compare a gâteau and a cake side by side, the most glaring difference has got to be their sizes. A gâteau often steals the show due to its height, often as tall as five or six layers. Regular cakes, on the other hand, tend to be a lot more modest, usually stopping at two layers.

The next difference is texture: Gâteaux will taste lighter on the tongue compared to the dense butteriness of cakes. This is because gâteaux favor the use of thin, airy sponge cakes like genoise as the base for a more melt-in-your-mouth texture, as opposed to the denser stuff used in cakes. And between each layer of sponge in a gâteau would be luxurious fillings like crème pâtissèrie (confectioner's custard), or fresh fruit preserves whereas a cake, being more modest, would use buttercream frosting for the filling. This is the reason why, as we mentioned earlier, a gâteau is best enjoyed right away — those fancy ingredients are just too delicate to last long.

The way cakes and gâteaux are finished often differs too. Cakes wear a complete coat of frosting from top to bottom, while a rather popular look for gâteaux are being "naked" sided, meaning they'd have the sides exposed to showcase the layers. They'd be finished with just a light glaze or decorated with some elegant toppings.

Despite there being actual differences between them, the two terms are very often used interchangeably. Take, for instance, the popular black forest cake. Despite the name, it can be considered a type of gâteau due to its sponge cake layers and rich fillings. In certain recipes, the cake is also made with naked sidings, further playing into the classic formula of a gâteau. Another example would be the opéra cake. This uncoated almond sponge cake is soaked in coffee syrup and layered with chocolate ganache and coffee-flavored buttercream before a layer of rich chocolate ganache is slathered on top. It has all the markings of a gâteau rather than a typical cake.

In the modern age, the line between a gâteau and a cake has blurred significantly. You'd find people using it to refer to any kind of upscale or otherwise "fancy" cake. When you find any cake-like dessert in a fine-dining restaurant, odds are good that it'd be called a gâteau even if it doesn't share any of the characteristics above.

So don't stress too much about which word to use. But if you've spent all the effort baking a really good dessert using premium ingredients and carefully stacked those sponge layers just right with fruits and creams between them, heck, go ahead and call it a gâteau. It certainly has more panache to it than just "cake", isn't it?