Here lies a croissant of such lacquered, mahogany splendour that one half expects it to have been varnished by the same cabinet-maker who attends to the estate’s dining table. Its laminations curl with the disciplined elegance of a guardsman’s pleated coat, each layer catching the light as though it had been individually buffed by an under-footman with nothing better to do, which — let us be honest — is precisely the sort of devoted idleness I prefer in my pastry staff.
The crown of crushed pistachios scattered across its summit is a positively jewel-encrusted affair, green and gold shards glittering like the contents of a dowager’s brooch box upended in a fit of temper. A dusting of icing sugar lingers along the lower flank like the first frost upon the east lawn, and I confess — no, I shall not confess, I shall simply declare — that the contrast of that pale sugar against the burnished crust is the sort of theatrical flourish I associate with only the finest patisseries of the Continent.
On Provenance: One must ask, naturally, from whence these pistachios truly hail — for Geoffrey, who tended the estate’s nut stores for the better part of three decades, held that a pistachio not personally inspected by his own hand was scarcely fit for the compost heap. I do hope this establishment has its own Geoffrey lurking somewhere behind the ovens, glaring suspiciously at delivery crates.
In the background lurks a second pastry, glazed and somewhat blurred by my photographer’s trembling hand, but I shall not be distracted by understudies when the leading lady before me commands such attention. This is a pastry fit for a minor coronation, or at the very least a rather grand christening tea, and I award it nine and three-quarter crumpets out of a possible ten — the missing quarter withheld purely on principle, lest the kitchen grow complacent.
