Content-Type: text/shitpost

Tags: oops

Until this morning, if you had asked me why petits fours were named that, I would have said it was obvious: “petit” is “small”, and they are small; “four” means “four” and they are square.

Except in French, “four” doesn't mean “four” or “square”. “Four” is Germanic. The French is going to be derived from Latin, so is going to be something like “quatre” or “quadratus” or something like that.

No, in fact the “four” means “oven”, cognate with “furnace”, because the petits fours were baked in a smaller over, or maybe in a cooler oven.

Sheesh.