Croissant
A Croissant (SAMPA "kr@'sant" or "kwa'son") is a butter-laden flaky French pastry, named for its distinctive crescent shape. Croissants are made of puff pastry or pate feuilleté, by layering pastry dough with butter and rolling and folding a few times in succession.
Croissant pastry can also be wrapped around almond paste or chocolate before it is baked (in the latter case, it becomes pain au chocolat), or sliced to admit sweet or savoury fillings.
Fanciful stories of a pastry invented in Vienna 1683 to celebrate the defeat of the Turkish siege of the city, a reference to the crescents on the Turkish flags, when the bakers, staying up all night heard the tunnelling operation and gave the alarm, or linking croissants with the siege of Budapest in 1686, or with Marie Antoinette's hankering after a Viennese specialty, are modern culinary legends. Alan Davidson, editor of the Oxford Companion to Food states that no printed recipe for the present-day croissant appears in any French recipe book before early in the 20th century.
The "Siege of Vienna" story seems to owe its wide diffusion to Alfred Gottschalk, who wrote about the croissant for the first edition of the Larousse Gastronomique, 1938, and there cited the original legend in the Turkish attack on Budapest in 1686, but on the history of food section in the same work, opted for the "siege of Vienna in 1683" version. Compare the Cappuccino legend.
